


Kept Man

by Mirabai0821



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Angst, Avvar!AU, Dirty Talk, F/M, Female Character of Color, Guess who is the Avvar though, M/M, Oral Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-06 12:54:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4222443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirabai0821/pseuds/Mirabai0821
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen Stanton Rutherford, son of Bann Stanton Rutherford of Honnleath only really tolerated Dorian Pavus and his ridiculously inappropriate teasings because the man was the only one of his long list of lads that could actually party like he meant it. </p><p>So when father announced that he was tired of his son dithering about postponing his wedding to the Lady Cassandra Allegra Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast, and was forcing him to walk down the aisle within the month, Dorian was the only man he could trust to ensure his final moments of bachelorhood would last him for the rest of his impending long, cold, and passionless life.</p><p>Except it wasn't going to be drinking and carousing that made the rest of Cullen's life worth it.</p><p>And Dorian just might find the passion his heart was craving too.</p><p>Avvar!AU where we switch things up a bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stag Party

**Author's Note:**

> I reject your avvar!Cullen (Not really, keep that stuff coming its wonderful) and substitute my own.

Cullen Stanton Rutherford, son of Bann Stanton Rutherford of Honnleath only really tolerated Dorian Pavus and his ridiculously inappropriate teasings because the man was the only one of his long list of lads that could actually party like he meant it. So when father announced that he was tired of his son dithering about postponing his wedding to the Lady Cassandra Allegra Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast, and force him to walk down the aisle within the month. Dorian was the only man he could trust to get him--

“So soundly wasted he could confuse a mare’s ass for a lady’s and not give a damn about the distinction. That was how you put it yes?”

Cullen bellowed his laughter before swallowing it up with a long pull of the cinnamon whiskey the bartender slammed in front of him. “Yes.”

“And tell me,” Dorian’s tastes were a little more refined than drinking anything distilled by a Ferelden, even the Fireblast whiskey, so he sipped his Firewine and didn’t really sniff at the inflated price of the Imperium imported spirit. “How does our fair lady Cassandra’s backside compare to that of a mare’s?”

Cullen blushed a furious shade of scarlet un-attributable to the five or so drinks in him. He decided to deflect. “Considering switching mounts are you Dorian?”

“Oh no my good man, I’ll always prefer the stallion, much more spirited ride. I could show you some time.” He waggled his eyebrows and Cullen groaned.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“The difference between a stallion and a gelding? No I don’t think you would.”

“No I’m talking about Cassandra.”

The Lady Pentaghast had been his betrothed for the last three years now, and a friend of his family for longer still. The match made sense. Perfect fucking sense. The Maker Himself couldn’t concoct a more perfect union between Lady Cassandra and Lord Cullen. She was strong, capable, and devoted. She’d be the perfect wife, and the perfect mother.

She was perfect.

Which meant that, to Cullen, she was anything but.

“I…she’s…We’ve mostly….”

“Ahh so you’ve touched her below the waist and found yourself longing for…longer.” Dorian guffawed at his jest.

“Shut up! Its not like that, she’s so proper and refined and I’d never dream of making her do anything she wouldn’t but…”

“She the kind of girl that has sex in the missionary position for the _sole_ purpose of procreation.” Dorian guessed and Cullen’s furious violet flush answered him honestly.

Cullen gulped another swallow of liquor. “I don’t want someone perfect. Someone who will dutifully kiss me on the cheek once in the morning, once at the dinner table, and once more before going to bed. I don’t want someone who’ll only desire me because of my ability to get them with child. You know she considers that the height of passion? Getting with child because it ‘fulfills her purpose as a noble born woman’.”

“All I’m suggesting is that those stallions harbor no such hang ups.”

“No, just woe betide you if the wrong people find out you’ve been dallying with that chevalier Captain Rylen. His career would be ruined and you’d be jailed for indecency or worse.”

Dorian made an aghast face, ashen and horrified.

“I’m sorry, that was cruel of me.” Cullen apologized and snatched a bottle of indeterminate liquor and proof from behind the counter when the barkeep wasn’t looking. It was full, and it sloshed around in the deep green glass like something dangerous. Something to obliterate his senses and make him forget that his life, while not over, was getting ready to take a turn for the sedate and pedestrian.

He’d marry this girl. He’d inherit his father’s estate, he’d have several kids quite possibly more than their finances could afford because Cassandra was so _deeply_ Andrastian she probably would never tell him no, and then he’d die. Rich, comfortable, and dead inside since age 27.

“Dorian…” Cullen moaned.

“I know my friend. Let’s go get the horses.”

**

They learned the lesson far too late to never drink and cart-drive. The pair of them were set upon almost immediately upon leaving the limits of the city, molested by a gang of bandits led by a large man with an impressive enviable beard—to hear Dorian’s characterization anyway. The purpose of the trip turned stag party was to secure a load of presents for his new bride-to-be from Val Royeaux. His father insisted that he go with armed escort but Cullen begged off, mentioning that the road was safe from bandits and ne’er do wells and that he’d be just fine with his own sword and his friend’s staff.

And they would have been.

Sizing up this band of dirty unwashed cowards playing at fearsome bandits, they would have presented no challenge for Cullen’s Templar training and Dorian’s Magisterium upbringing. They were powerful men, formidable.

But they were drunk off their asses which is why this gang of rabble had subdued them embarrassingly quickly.

“Well now, what have we here, a gift from the Maker. Such pretty treasures and ours for the taking.” The large man rumbled.

“Take what you want and leave us be!” Dorian slurred, wobbly on his feet even within the grasp of one of beardy’s lackeys.

“Oh we will.” The glint in beardy’s eyes caused a deadly unwelcome shiver to crawl up and down Dorian’s spine. “Lads, take the gold and lash the swarthy one to my horse. Kill the Ferelden!”

Oh shit!

Cullen, in his final moments of life as a small be-daggered elven lady approached him with gleeful murder in her eyes, supposed it was better this way. No passionless, perfect marriage for him, just a dagger in the heart and a body left to rot by the roadside.

Well, he always wanted adventure.

Unwilling, though, to not go too quietly into that dark night, he reached for his sword and bellowed—hoping to take maybe two of them out in his wine soaked final stand.

He lunged for the elven woman and she died. Run through.

By an arrow in her neck.

Cullen, hazy and confused, heard a trilling shout and a significantly terrifying roar.

The bandits began to scream and scatter as they fell one by one to arrows fletched in red feathers the same color as the cloak he wore around himself.

Fear made flesh, exploded from the bushes as a large bare chested qunari emerged, axe swinging and glittering in the moonlight. The qunari lunged for the bearded man, swinging and snarling.

Unwilling to challenge an ox-man for his prize, the bearded leader leapt onto his horse and fled screaming and cursing.

“Damn avvar whores!”

Dorian lay hog-tied in the dirt, screaming as though being murdered though only suffering maybe at worst wounded pride and a bruised wrist. He screamed even louder when the axe bearing qunari approached him.

“Please, please don’t eat me!” He cried.

“Ehh, you’d make a poor meal. Though Iron Bull does prefer his meat dark.”

“HA!” The qunari named Iron Bull bellowed before grabbing Dorian with infinite and incomprehensible tenderness and—though not untying him—bringing him to his feet. “Then why haven’t I eaten you Boss.”

Cullen woozy, drunk, sick and scared could only barely comprehend the woman the qunari was addressing.

She emerged from her perch in a tree, falling with a hard thud onto the dusty Orlesian road. But, he understood his jest.

She was dark skinned, darker than Dorian. The color of cloves or better yet, the color of the cocoa pods father sometimes had imported from Rivain to make chocolate for his mother when she still lived. Her eyes shined in the moonlight and though he could not discern their color, he could tell they glowed. She dressed like no lady, clad in furs and leather and armed with red longbow and red arrows.

“Are you hurt?” She asked him and Cullen could not answer, because he pitched forward and voided his guts at her feet.

**  
He woke to two different sensations at once—the feeling of a cool compress on his forehead and the scratch of bonds at his wrists.

He also woke to glowing hands coursing chastely up and down his chest and neck. In the dim firelight, Cullen realized he was in a tent of some kind, though much more spacious and comfortable than any soldier’s tent he ever experienced.

There was a woman attending him, dark of skin though not the woman before. That woman had kind eyes—what he thought was kind given the situation—and a warm smile. This lady was all iron and frost.

“Stay still pale face, I’ll not have you befouling my lady’s tent more than what you already have.” She scolded.

“Water.” He groaned, abhorring at once the taste of liquor, dryness, and vomit in his mouth.

The woman shoved at him a skin of water and poured it unkindly over his mouth uncaring of how much he actually got down his throat.

“Be nice to him Viv, we need him alive.”

The woman again. The kind one. She entered the tent and in the better light he found her…

She was hard muscle, that much was discernable. Hard muscle _and_ soft curve. Curves at her hips and waist and chest and neck and

He felt a stinging slap. “Avert your eyes pale face straw brain. My lady did not give you leave to leer!”

Cullen’s eyes and anger flared, he sat up trying to struggle and release himself from his bonds only to be met with another stinging slap.

“I said quiet heathen!”

“Untie me, wench, and we’ll see how many slaps you fell across me then.”

The woman, the younger kinder curvier one, laughed. “Ha! I like him.”

“I am pleased my sky lady finds this straw head Dog Lord so appealing, but that doesn’t change the fact he is our hostage.”

“Guest.” The other woman correct gently.

The older iron lady gasped.

“Surely you don’t mean to keep him!”

“I’m not some pet! Don’t talk like I’m not sitting right here. I’m Lord Cullen Stanton Rutherford and I demand you untie me right now! I demand you release me, my comrade, and my possessions and I’ll consider your cooperation when the chevaliers haul your unwashed…”

The woman called Viv slapped him again. He lunged at her, snapping his teeth knowing nothing else to assault her with. Viv elegantly avoided his ineffectual bites and went to stand next to her mistress who wore an unreadable curious face.

“Untie him Viv.”

“My lady!”

“Do as I say.”

Viv produced a crude knife, dodged Cullen’s snarling and snapping –Dog Lord indeed—and cut his bonds. She then dodged out of the way as Cullen lunged forward with curled hands hoping to clamp them around her neck.

The younger woman moved like wind puffed from the very mouth of the Maker himself. Clove colored iron hands clamped around his reaching wrists, wrenched them, and Cullen’s world flipped. He was on his back, the lady locking him under her, knees crushing his hips.

Her kind face still retained its kindness, but it was an emotion backlit with a fierce and deadly fire. In the dim light, her eyes—now discernable to be whiskey colored—glimmered and glowed like blown glass right before it cools. Her lips were wet and plum colored. In another world, in another time not when he was trapped under her and at her utter mercy, he would have found them delectable.

Okay, strike that.

In this very world right now he found them delectable.

Her hair hung in barbaric looking knotted black vines that hissed a bit when she moved and framed her face like a nest of snakes sprouting from her head.

He wanted to touch them.

Grab them.

Pull them.

Oh shit.

“My. Lady!” Viv screeched.

“Leave us Viv.”

“I will tell Iron Bull of this!”

“And he’d just laugh at you and tell you to quit worrying.” She never took her eyes off him as she barked commands to the other lady. “Catalogue the riches, and have Krem and the warriors drive the cart back to the main road. Take that red cloak and the Magister’s robe, slash them up and coat them with goat’s blood then light the cart on fire.”

“At once.”

“No!” Cullen cried.

“Do you really think you’re in a position to tell me no right now _Cullen_.” She purred his name like a moan and a curse.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

“My cloak, it has sentimental value, my mother gave it to me.”

“Have her get you another one.”

“She no longer can.”

Her expression morphed from feral conqueror to something more tender. “You’ll have to give me something then, to convince others of your fate. Something knowable as yours _My Lord Cullen_.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. SHIT.

“Now!” she demanded, squeezing her knees together and all but _crushing_ his pelvis.

Oh Maker, oh no.

Without thought, (and more disturbingly without guilt) Cullen removed his betrothal ring—a token from Cassandra. Actually it was a token from Cassandra’s lady Josephine because Cassandra herself was too prim and proper to hand him the gift herself.

“No one’s gonna find a single loop of cheap gold in a bonfire, _Cullen_.”

Okay, this wasn’t fair. She could _tell_ what the sound of his name from her lips was doing to him. Maker’s blood.

“F-fine. M..my shirt…it’s embroidered with my family crest.”

The woman leaned back and Cullen fought and lost the urge to take stock of the way her waist and neck stretched and craned and pulled back away from him. He took stock of the ample swell of her breasts and he wondered with burning shameful curiosity what color were the nipples on a woman so dark. They wouldn’t be the dusky pink of the pale tavern wenches and lesser ladies he’d bedded as a youth. They’d be something darker.

Darker like the unchecked lust currently galloping through his veins. The woman let him up and he sat there dumbly.

“My lady doesn’t have time for your games!” Viv sniped reminding him there were more people in this stiflingly hot tent.

“Take my blighting shirt then!” He growled, flushing.

“Oh he turns a pretty color don’t you think Viv?”

Viv scoffed.

“I’m not taking anything from you, you won’t give Cullen.”

Cullen laughed. “Then return to me my…”

She silenced him with a soft, sweet smelling finger on his lips noticing with mirth the scar that bisected the top one. A pink tongue darted out to curl around her plum lips and twin bolts of desire lanced them both in the gut—empowering her, and leaving him bleeding and desperate on the ground.

“Those we took from that ass Blackwall, he was trespassing in territory he ought not be.”

“They were never his to begin with!”

“Much like the land you dog fuckers took from the Orlesians and called it Ferelden. Did those lands not belong to the elves? Yet you call it yours now and use it all the same.”

Intelligent. Deadly. Powerful. Beautiful.

Shii-iit.

With perhaps only a modicum of shame flavored with a pinch of eagerness, Cullen removed his shirt and tossed it angrily at Viv who snapped it up with the ring and departed.

He could feel her gaze rake over him, drip over him and coat him like honey from her whiskey-honey colored eyes. He felt foolish, he actually crossed his hands over his chest at an attempt to hide what exactly? His modesty?

The foolish gesture was met with her laugh, nothing sardonic or cruel, just an amused little chuckle Cullen would have found cute where it coming from anyone but her.

Coming from her it was devastating in the best possible way.

“I’m glad you find my discomfort so pleasing _my lady_.”

She laughed again, devastating him again, before tossing a fur over him. “Ah, I must endeavor to preserve my guest’s honor at all times. I had no idea you were a blushing maid.”

“I am not!” he looked about for a weapon, his eyes landed on a dagger.

So did hers.

Before she could strike, he did.

Except she didn’t strike.

She let him grab the dagger, lunge for her, and press it to her throat completely ambivalently as though he were doing nothing more than sipping water from a skin.

To show his seriousness, he pressed the dagger deeper, drawing a bright red jewel of blood from her dark brown throat.

His heart hammered, it galloped, it raced, it _flew_ in chest. He was so close, she was so close. He could smell the scent of her, the primal leather, sweat, and fur.

She smelled sweet too, oranges and spice.

He groaned inwardly and prayed it remained inward.

This woman. She saved his life, then imprisoned him, then un-manned him. While simultaneously making his body beg for more.

She intimidated him yes, but as they stood this close they both knew she was indeed at his mercy. He could open her throat and there wouldn’t be a thing she could do to stop him were he so determined. She didn’t overpower him.

She matched him.

She scared him.

But the gleam in her liquor eyes _thrilled_ him.

“What are you gonna do Cullen?”

“Kill you, get my friend, get out of here.”

“Okay.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“If it’s my time to die, let the Great Sky Lady accept me and my deeds, judge me whole and pure. Let it not be known that I, Elyn of Yan knew fear in her final moments.”

She tilted her neck back, exposing more of her flesh, and were his mouth not closed, Cullen would possibly have drooled all over it.

“But Iron Bull won’t be as forgiving as I am. And you’ll have a hard time getting down from the mountain as you are. You’ll get lost little pup. And even in your rich cloak with your mage friend to keep you warm--you’ll freeze, if my men let you freeze. They’ll find you, and if Viv is leading them, she’d like to stick you and make you bleed to death slowly as she marched you off the top of the mountain. But go ahead, pup, kill me.”

Her eyes flickered and locked on his own and she licked her lips, drawing her tongue deliberately over both the top and bottom of her pouty and sensuous mouth. “There are worse ways to go.”

Cullen dropped the knife and silenced her with a kiss he hoped she wouldn’t think pathetic. With Cassandra he had to be chaste, measured, press the flesh together and go no further. With her, with this woman whose name he only learned not minutes before, he didn’t need to be so careful.

He unleashed himself upon her confident and burning with the knowledge that she would match him blow for blow.

Oh Holy beloved Maker, creator of earth and sky, she did.

She pressed so hard back against him their teeth clicked. Open mouthed and moaning their tongues met and clashed, licking and curling against one another as their bodies sealed even tighter together.

She pressed along the long length of him, her furs brushing against his bare chest. All of a sudden, she broke the kiss, fisted her fingers in his golden hair and half pressed half forced his mouth to her neck.

“Apologize.” She purred.

Cullen groaned, body flaming higher, cock stiffening further, but he opened his mouth and licked at her wound, lapping at the blood before…

“Ahh!” He bit her.

And rather than fly away from him screeching about the animal he was (as Cassandra might have). She pressed herself tighter against him, brushing the juncture of her thighs against his cock.

“Yes, pup, bite!”

He bit her again in another part of the expanse of impossibly soft, impossibly dark, impossibly _delectable_ flesh. “That’s not my name!” He growled.

They were standing.

She hooked a leg around one of his, her foot pushing into the back of his knee.

Then they were not standing.

He wanted to roll to his back, do something to prevent his fall, but she was like silverite gripped and sealed around him. He couldn’t move unless she gave him leave to. She crashed, possibly in attempts to protect _him,_ into a soft palate of furs that the still functioning part of his mind might have taken for a bed.

“Cullen!” She cried correcting herself as he laved her neck.

Her, crying his name like that, he might be ruined for other women. He’d pray on it later but right now, she was his Maker.

Her nails raked up the naked flesh of his back. They would leave marks, and he was disappointed.

Because he couldn’t see them.

Her mouth found a similar spot on him as he had her. A tender bit of pale flesh on his neck just below his ear. She kissed it with a tenderness that made him want to weep were he not so fucking _…._ she bit him back.

“Fuck!” He cried.

She bit him again, amused by his swear. “Such a naughty mouth pup.”

Hands roamed and grabbed her breasts and squeezed none too gently. Fumbling and furious his hand reached for the seam on her fur covering that would denote the edge of the garment. He found it, wiggled under it, and pushed up to palm her naked breast with his bare hands. He found her indeterminably colored nipple and squeezed it.

She moaned long and loud before swallowing him in another wet kiss.

“Not. My. Name. _Elyn_.”

“Cullen!”

“Take it off.” He grumbled between demanding kisses.

“Think you can order me around in my own tent? Take it off me yourself. You want it, don’t you?”

She bucked her hips up against him, nearly stopping his heart.

“I’m not taking anything from you, you won’t give. _Elyn_.” He mimicked.

And damn him to the Void, when she smiled it wasn’t feral or demanding or lustful. It was genuine and sweet, heartbreaking in its earnestness.

Cullen Stanton Rutherford’s heart melted into goop and reformed in this woman’s hands.

All on the curve of her smile.

“You’re learning, Cullen. Let me up.”

He had been caging her, crushing her into the furs with his body. He pulled back and watched in a recreation of their previous encounter when he took his shirt off.

She pulled at the furs, undid the laces and let her top fall away.

Plum.

Like her lips, her nipples were plum colored.

“We match now.” Their hearts were still racing, still high on the lust that swirled around them. But as they regarded each other, that lust –while not cooling, Maker no (if anything he wanted her more now)—seemed to slow a bit.

“Hardly.” He answered, eyes still locked on her chest now wondering if plum colored nipples tasted as different as they looked.

“Do I scare you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Do you want me then? Let no one say Elyn takes her men coerced or afraid.”

He met her eyes and answered with more truth than he—to his shame—could ever admit to his family. “Yes.”

Her skin had a sheen about it, a softness, a sweetness and a hardness. In the candlelight she shined. They were an arm’s length apart on their knees regarding one another. Elyn rose to her feet and pushed down what defied even the definition of a loincloth revealing a thatch of curly black hair and thighs that made the lust in him combust into something unnamable in any language he knew.

“Maker’s breath.” He murmured.

“Come Cullen,” she sat back down on the furs and leaned back on her elbows. “Come.”

Yes.

He didn’t remember removing his pants or boots or smallclothes. It didn’t matter anyway as they were gone now. Her flesh pressed against his flesh and that was all he cared to know.

She guided him with her hands around his wrists to the juncture of her thighs. He scoffed, she thought he wouldn’t know what to do.

He showed her.

His fingers curled around her wetness as his tongue curled around her plum colored sweet flavored nipples. The surprised little moans she made delighted him, he felt pride as she keened and arched into his touch.

“Mayhap you are not such a pup after all,” she cried breathlessly, bucking her hips against his teasing fingertips.

“Call me pup again and see what happens.”

Elyn lifted her head and nipped his neck. “Pup.”

His earlobe. “Pup.”

Then she latched her teeth on his top lip, tongue curling against the scar Cassandra always avoided by kissing the other side of his mouth “Pup.”

His fingers plunged rudely within her and he set a blistering pace with his arm, hammering home as deep as he could go.

She cried his name gasping, fingernails clutching into the meat of his shoulders and biceps. He punished her with his pace, grinning with every cry of his actual name, grinning harder when she begged for more.

This woman.

Was begging.

_Begging._

**_Him._ **

Oh yes, the slowly dying part of his good Andrastian mind thought, you’re ruined for other women forever.

Nothing was like the high of having this powerful, deadly woman—a woman who could crush him to death with her thighs alone to say nothing of the weapons she could probably wield with deadly efficiency—screaming for him, cunt clamping tight around his fingers.

She wailed when she came, calling him by the correct name and Cullen almost joined her in that bliss.

Until it was his back pressed against the floor, her dripping cunt sliding tantalizingly over a cock so hard it was painful.

“Say it!” she growled.

“Anything.” He moaned breathlessly.

“Say you want me. Scream it.”

“Elyn Maker, ye—“

She sheathed him by the second syllable of Maker and was sealed hip to hip with him before he could moan his rapture.

Elyn’s hips rolled and swirled, she didn’t bounce on him, she teased him with shallow strokes and subtle clenches. He tried to control her thrusts with hands curling tightly into her soft and fleshy hips but she laughed at his attempts and continued on her own pace.

“Harder. Please.” He begged, needing her to push so hard it hurt. He wanted to feel this, her, to feel _alive_ for the first time in his life. He wanted her to make his heart beat faster and harder than it ever did. He wanted her to uncouple the chains that had been placed on him at birth. Most nobles weren’t even aware of them like he was, accepting the fetters as if there were no other way to live. Somehow, Cullen knew better and chafed at his imprisonment with his sedate life, sedate courtship, sedate everything.

No longer.

He screamed her name, begged, and pleaded with her, demanded with brutal thrusts of his cock deep within this woman to _set him free._

And dear Maker…

“Come for me Cullen. Come inside me. Fuck me, fill me. Yes Cullen, there, fuck me deeper.”

“Elyn!” His heart erupted, beat so fast it broke. He came like felled tree, crashing and violent.

He came harder when he felt her clench and holler, screaming his name as she spasmed above him.

Elyn rolled forward bringing her body back against him, breathing and shuddering and so sweetly spent.

If the alcohol were still in his blood he would have blurted out that he loved her.

Thank the Maker for the small miracles.

Thank Him for the bigger ones too.

Like the sweetest kiss he ever experienced in his life being placed on his forehead before landing on his lips. “Thank you pup.” She smiled wickedly before rolling off him.

“Where are you going?” Cullen cursed himself at sounding so needy.

If she heard it, she didn’t register it.

Another miracle.

“Here, drink.” She offered him a wooden cup filled with something vile smelling but good tasting.

The alcohol reminded him of Dorian and deep shame flooded him. He just had the fucking of the millennia from a woman who basically kidnapped him and his friend and he never had the decency to ask after said friend.

“You and your magister are under my protection for now. Iron Bull is my loyal lieutenant and will take good care of your friend, he is no savage like you people tend to think.”

She took the cup back from him and swallowed whatever he didn’t. “Rest now.” She pushed him into the furs.

“Wait.” He called sleepily. “Where are you going?”

“To my business. Don’t worry pup. I won’t let you come to harm.”

He couldn’t bring himself to admit he wasn’t worried about his protection but desired her company close as he fell asleep.

And as though reading his thoughts, she grabbed his cloak—the last gift of his beloved and departed mother a gift she saved from a brutal fate—and kissed the fur before draping it across him. “Sky lady grant you sweet dreams.”

If Cullen wasn’t in love with her already—

He was now.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I adore all the avvar!Cullen on my dash lately, I wanted to do something different. This may go on, this may not. Sorry Cassandra, I know I went a little hard on you.


	2. The Pup and the Little Girl

Cullen woke with a warm body next to him, straddling him, hairs tickling his bare thighs and waist and…

Oh shit.

He popped his eyes opened and they locked on Elyn’s. Gold clashed with whiskey and a feral wide open grin. One poised precariously over his morning erection ready to devour it as though it were her every day breakfast.

He tried to squirm but her hands were firmly on his hips, holding him in place. But Elyn took pity on her poor puppy and instead of swallowing him whole, she kissed the shaft of him, fingertips stroking him lightly with every press of her lips.

“How nice of you, pup, to get me such a present so early in the morning.”

“What…what are you doing?”

“Straw for hair, straw for brains.”

She licked him, curling her tongue around the head of his shaft, making her intentions well and plainly known.

Good well-bred ladies don’t do this.

Base born serving girls don’t even do this.

Every flavor of lady Cullen ever sampled had never done something like this with him. And while not a complete lech he was a bit of a cad so he had sampled a bit during his life. Chasing some kind of emotion or feeling that would last after his balls were drained and yet always finding nothing.

She slid her tongue against him, drawing a lazy line up from base to tip. Her nails pressed into his hips and she moaned.

Good Maker, _she_ was enjoying this.

_He_ was enjoying this too, body having accepted and enjoyed the pleasurable feeling while his mind was still coming to grips with the fact this woman’s mouth was on his cock.

“What was that little pup?” She kept her eyes on him as she layered kisses on his shaft. “I didn’t hear you.”

“M..more.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want? You seem hesitant.”

Cullen groaned and bucked his hips, sliding his cock through her parted lips. “Yes.” He growled. He demanded.

The edge in his voice seemed to please her. Elyn opened her mouth and swallowed him whole. Tongue flat on the bottom of her mouth, as she slid down him, it rasped against his entire length.

Cullen moaned, then hissed, then bucked and writhed. It felt just like being inside a woman, well… it technically was but this was unlike anything he’d ever felt ever and he thought he’d felt all there was to feel.

Was that how it was going to be with this woman? Was she constantly going to surprise him, make his mind and body melt with sensations heretofore unknown and even unfathomed?

He couldn’t contemplate the answer to that mostly rhetorical question, because Elyn began to suck and his entire world was pulled out from under him.

The moan he released rattled him down to his balls which only seemed to encourage her further.

She sucked him slowly, bobbing her head carefully up and down him, sometimes keeping her tongue flat, other times swirling it so hard and so fast he thought it would twist his cock clean off. Her hands aided her, alternating between cupping his sack, squeezing it gently, or wrapping around the base of him, applying light strokes and squeezes while she worked his head.

“Oh Maker, Elyn, Maker!”

She popped off of him and laughed, licking his head again like a sweet confection. “I wonder if your god minds this particular bit of blasphemy?”

Her hands and fingertips caressed the long length of him. Maker’s sodding blood she was _teasing_ him.

“I don’t…I don’t care.” Cullen cried, whimpering and moaning at the loss of her hot wet heat.

“Oh?” she rewarded him with another long gulping suck before releasing him again.

“Please, don’t stop…please.”

“You beg pretty, you call my name prettier. Call for me Cullen.”

“Elynnn-.” She took him deep and began to work him earnestly. Her mouth and throat made the most obscene noises as she sucked him blind, and deaf—though not dumb. He moaned and screamed, swore curses he would have never uttered not even drunkenly. Unaware of what to do with his hands he fisted them in the furs before lust and curiosity overcame him. He grabbed a handful of her vines and used them to push her down, her nose pressing into the dark gold curls at the base of his cock.

It made her suck harder.

She liked it, and let him know by humming her approval.

Her other hand disappeared from him and she began to moan harder.

Elyn’s eyes snapped shut and her brow knitted as he watched her realizing her fingers were probably buried deep in her cunt bringing herself to pleasure while she sucked him to his own.

“Elyn…Elyn.” His thighs tightened and her eyes found him again, wordlessly imploring with her gaze to come.

“I’m…I’m…”

Her eyes rolled back as she came against her fingers, mouth and neck pausing as her body locked. She moaned around him, sending him shooting off the edge after her, brought forward by the image of her coming with her mouth around him. It was too much, too hot, too obscene, too fucking good. He loosed his pleasure in hot creamy jets of seed against her tongue while he grunted and groaned her name.

She never moved her mouth off him.

She swallowed everything he gave.

Limp and sated, Elyn rose and lay next to him.

“Where…” he panted. “Where did you learn such things?”

Her devastating laugh filled the tent. “Where does anyone learn such things? Did you have to watch your parents make love in order to find out how it was done? Or did you watch the dogs in the kennels?”

“No dog I’ve ever know can do that.”

She turned to him and smiled, her eyes hazy and guileless. “No, I imagine they don’t. I wanted to try something. So I did.”

“You’ve never done that before?”

“Would it shock you to hear me say no?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Her eyes flashed a little. It wasn’t quite sunrise, but it was no longer in the black of night either. Bare hints of orange color came in through the crack in the tent’s entrance. The candles from the night before had burned to nothing but a little brazier still held lit coals so he did see her soft expression harden a bit.

“You…you seem like…”

“The barbarian whore. To use words common in your tongue.”

“N…no that’s not what I said.”

“Not said, but insinuated.”

“Elyn.”

“Pup.”

“I don’t know anything about you. Who you are, where we are. You, for better or worse, are my captor and last night and this morning you…we…The things we…I don’t know what to think about any of this except to fall back on old lessons taught to children long ago.”

Elyn’s face softened again, her expression turned thoughtful. “Okay, pup, I won’t hold that against you.”

“Could you please stop calling me that.”

“You call me a whore and then begrudge me when I insult you back?” She snickered playfully. “You are in my tent, in my home. The people are mine, the horses are mine, the food and the riches are also mine. I will call you my name then.”

Cullen frowned but before he could retort she added. “But only in private.”

“And in public?”

“You are my guest and will be afforded every courtesy due the guest of a Thane.”

“You’re a Thane? A leader?”

“Don’t tell me that surprises you too? Orlais and Ferelden are both ruled by ladies.”

“I well…the avvar…we’re used to hearing them be such _…_ ”

“Rawr rawr manly?”

Cullen nodded dumbly.

“Oh pup, how else can I surprise you? I do love the look on your face.”

They lazed in each others arms as the sun rose. Elyn explained to him how the camp was arranged and how it worked. Viv was senior healer and senior augur. She consulted with the spirits to learn their minds and appease their whims. Iron Bull was her lieutenant, second in command in all ways. His tent was the second closest to the bonfire, second in prominence only to her own.

“I found a crashed ship, laden with treasure and bodies. Iron Bull and his man Krem were the only survivors. My brother Axwe thought we should send them back to the sea but what the Sky Lady gives, it is not our place to give back. Viv and I nursed him back to health and he’s been with me ever since. Though he is qunari, he is strong, intelligent, cunning even at times. I trust no one greater with my life, which is why you should trust him with the life of your friend.”

The camp was arranged in concentric rings, at the center of which roared bonfire constantly lit and constantly attended by bare-breasted flame priestesses.

“The fire warms us, guides us, protects us, and feeds us. It cooks the food, it tempers the weapons. The fire cares for us and so too do we care for it. It means death for a priestess to let the fire go out.”

Those with tents and huts in the inner ring, closest to the fire, were those that enjoyed favor and position within the clan. Viv, Iron Bull, Elyn, all had tents that crowned the inner ring while people like Krem kept their house still within that ring but lower and further away. The arrangement was not permanent. If you fell out of favor, your house fell away from the flame, and if you earned it, you could advance closer. The Thane decides position, but the augur upon consultation of the gods can recommend a Thane be removed or be elevated.

“We take our meals in the long house. Cook and the rest should be ready soon. I’ll have Krem or Viv fetch you to breakfast.”

Elyn rose nude and glorious. She wiggled her hips a bit knowing Cullen was staring.

“Where are you going?”

“Do you miss me already?” she laughed. “I told you pup, no one will harm you.”

“Its not that.”

“So you do miss me?”

“Are you going to tell me why I’m here? Why you’re keeping me? Am I to be your toy?”

“It is still early yet, sleep.”

She donned her clothes.

“Elyn!”

And left.

**

Maybe an hour or so later, Cullen woke to yet another woman assaulting him as he slept. But this time it was far lest pleasant. Viv towered above him, her foot poking rudely in his ribs.

“Get up straw head.”

Cullen groaned and rolled over, pulling the furs over his eyes to keep out the heated stare of quite possibly the most hateful woman in Thedas. Though, Cullen thought with rising thrill, the presence of this woman’s foot in his side confirmed that the night before and this morning was no fugue of the copious amount of liquor he drank.

All that really happened, he had the ache in his back and tingle in his balls to prove it.

“I have a name. And I’ll not move until you use it.”

“Then we will wait here forever Dog Lord,” she sneered. “Until you starve.”

On cue, Cullen’s stomach growled in protest.

Viv rolled her eyes and tossed to him leather trousers, fur lined boots, and a thick leather and fur overshirt. Cullen eyed the garments suspiciously.

“I have clothes.”

“Those rags will have you frozen and dead by mid-day.”

“An outcome that would no doubt please you.”

“Indeed, but my lady would not have you so ill-treated in her care so…” Viv crossed her arms and waited.

“Are you going to watch?”

“I needn’t, I’ve an eyeful of you already. More like a peek.” Viv sneered with a wry smile before turning away to preserve what dignity of his she hadn’t already just stripped.

**

Outside they met Dorian clad in similar clothing though draped in a long luxurious pelt of unidentifiable hide.

“Ah Holy Maker you yet live!” His friend cried.

The two men shook hands. Dorian gave Cullen an appraising look and smiled.

“So I wonder then which of the two of us went off the manor keep first? Because it’s definitely not a matter of which given the flushed look on your face and the slightly akimbo smile that I’ve NEVER seen on you sober. But a matter of how long did we lads last against the lascivious charms of our respective captors?”

“Dorian you…how could you?…Dorian!”

“You didn’t’ see him Cullen! I’m done with stallions forever. Now, I’m strictly,” Dorian shivered delightfully and grinned. “Red meat.”

Cullen groaned, then laughed, then groaned again. “Tell me you have a plan to get out of here.”

“Me? Plan? I can barely walk.”

“Your magic.”

The Tevinter mage made a pained face. “He took my robe and my staff. Shredded one and snapped the other.” Dorian took his hands and made the motion of breaking a twig. “Just like that, like it was nothing. That staff was custom made and worth more than every life here. And it’s the only thing I can use to channel my magic unfortunately. I’m as useless as a babe.”

“Which is no different than you with it.” Cullen pouted. “How are we supposed to escape now?”

“If you think you can escape so easy, try.” Viv laughed, interrupting their supposed clandestine escape strategy meeting. “You dolts haven’t noticed that neither of you are chained or fettered. Partly because we have no reason to fear you, partly because even if you ran…where would you go?”

Viv, curse her, was right. They were high in the mountains, though which range and where he couldn’t say. They could be in the Emprise du Lion, they could be in the Frostbacks. Given how heavy he drank the night before he could be in the damn Anderfels for all he knew.

Running would mean a slow death of cold or a fast death from a wrong turn off a cliff.

“Why are you keeping us then? You have your treasures, let us go.” Cullen barked.

“Haven’t you read any of the stories? The barbarian princess needs to steal her mate and…” Dorian started.

Viv laughed, full, loud, and hearty. Without a trace of her trademark snark.

“You think my lady needs to steal a mate? You think half the people here wouldn’t throw themselves off a cliff because she commanded it. You are here because it pleases her that you are.”

He bedded girls for their novelty. He didn’t try to be cruel but in the darkest, most honest parts of the night, he admitted to himself that he had treated some of his former lovers harshly. He looked for something in them he knew he’d never find, not through any fault of their own. They had all been beautiful girls, some more so, some less. Intelligent and funny-- again some more so or some less, but all of them were novelties.

He was the novelty now.

It made him angry at himself for his monstrousness and at Elyn for making him swallow a taste of his own bitter medicine. She would use him, then toss him away, dumping him on some road with a smile and a ‘don’t write me, I’ll write you.’

The men ate in silence, their imprisonment and the reason for it weighing down on them. Cullen kept his eyes firmly in his stew while Dorian glanced about taking stock of the diners in the hall.

It was a long hall, filled with clusters of people gathered around a single large bowl. They all ate with either their hands or little pieces of flatbread. Considerate of the finicky tendencies of their guests, Viv supplied Dorian and Cullen with spoons so they wouldn’t starve themselves out of a misplaced sense of propriety.

They all seemed to be arranged in familial groups. Mothers, children, fathers, and grandparents all ate from the same bowl with the same right hand, chewing and chatting happily. There were nine such units in this hall, the smallest of which gave Dorian pause.

It was pair of men, dark skinned and handsome. One had his hair in the thick vines Thane Elyn wore, another had hair cropped very short almost bald. They leaned into one another feeding each other from their bowl , foreheads pressed close together and sighing happily.

Viv caught Dorian’s eye. “Shocking?”

“Yes. Don’t make me tell you why. You’re intelligent enough to know how it is where I come from.”

Viv nodded, conceding the point.

“They are both warriors Delrin and Addox. They fight hard, they sacrifice their blood. They bring home treasures, and they help make the weapons and hunt the game. They do all that is required of them so they enjoy the privileges of clanship as anyone else. It is so ordered.”

Dorian swallowed thickly and nodded.

If only.

**

Viv, once her charges were fed, quickly washed her hands of them and gave them over to Krem who took them on a tour of the camp.

“Horses are kept here, food stores here. The women tan the hides here and the men smelt the metal we find here. Children sew and thatch baskets, in the summer they tend the goats. Blah, blah, blah.”

“I get the feeling you’d rather be somewhere else.” Dorian quipped.

“Yeah, Chief, Boss and Little Brother are holding a war meeting. If I know Little Brother this is gonna be good.”

“Little Brother?” Cullen asked.

“Yeah Axwe of Yan, Elyn’s older brother.”

“I suspect there is a very emasculating reason why he’s called little brother.”

Krem nodded at Dorian. “Yeah. Elyn’s mother, the auger before Viv, chose her to be Thane over her elder brother when their father died. Elyn’s stronger, smarter, just better. Axwe’s strong and smart too but Elyn, there’s something about her that made the Auger Iselle pick her and not him. So rather than accepting that she had something he didn’t, he began focusing on the one thing she didn’t have, he did.”

“Which is?”

“A cock.

“Up until now, all of Yan’s Thanes have been men. Axwe is trying to spread rumors that she’s a poor leader. Most won’t listen to him, but he does have the ear of warriors like Addox and Delrin. Which might cause problems.”

The three of them heard shouting, an argument spilling over from a long tent across the way.

“Elyn!”

Cullen’s heart quickened before he could tamp down on the emotion. You’re just a toy to her, and therefore these feelings, whatever they are, are unworthy of her. The mental pep talk didn’t really help. Just the sound of her name was enough to make warmth flood him and his cheeks flush for reasons other than the mountain chill. As soon as he recognized the feeling though, anger quickly replaced it. He resolved not to be some fragile thing broken against her anvil of lust. She couldn’t, wouldn’t wrap him around her like that.

_I’m not the blushing maid she thinks I am. Nor am I the pup. I’m the lion in the corner, and she hasn’t yet heard me roar. I’ll make her hear me, make her know I’m not to be trifled with._ He thought.

Dorian, Krem, and Cullen observed as the fight carried on.

“How can you allow our clan to suffer such a slight. Blackwall was poaching on _our_ territory!”

A dark skinned man, who walked with an undeserved sense of power, stormed out of the tent with a loathsome look on his face.

Elyn, serene and calm yet thoroughly annoyed, followed after him.

“I don’t intend to go to war with that bearded fuck, Axwe.”

“Then you shame us all!”

“Don’t talk to me of shame brother! It’s no shame to preserve the lives of our people! And as we are, we cannot challenge the might and metal of the chevalier bandits!”

“Then you shame us further by calling us weak. Father would not have stood for this! Sky Mother turns her face from you in shame.”

Apparently that was some sort of foul oath, because Cullen heard a panicked swear emerge from Krem and several low whistles from other clansmen.

Elyn’s face morphed into something that stopped Cullen’s heart cold. Her hair wasn’t temptingly thick vines to wrap his fingers around, instead they became snakes that hissed with the subtle tosses of her head. Her whiskey eyes simmered like coals over a flame and her fists balled tightly ready to strike.

All her rage and power, held back by even temper. It would be nothing for her to crack her brother’s skull and equally nothing to leave him be and let the insult stand. Elyn was letting him choose.

“I challenge you sister, you are no longer fit to lead!”

Elyn's face fell, and for a moment she looked stricken before coming back to herself.

A few men and women cheered approval while most groaned and started to jeer. “Very well. Iron Bull!”

“Yeah Boss!”

“Send word to Clan Kaas, have Thane Istair bring his party for the challenge. He must be our witness.”

“Aye Boss!” The qunari searched the crowd of faces looking for someone. His dark gaze settled on Dorian like a heavy cloak, his knees buckled under the weight of it. “Come with me little peacock.”

Dorian shrugged. “When in Orlais.” And followed after his captor.

The man called Axwe hollered for another man, Delrin, and together the two stalked off toward a tent noticeably farther from the fire and in the outer circle.

“Viv!” Viv appeared from a tent, covered up to her elbows in blood.

“Sacha is giving birth to a litter of six. This better be good.”

“Six children!” Cullen gasped.

Krem laughed. “Sacha is a mabari, the only thing Viv loves in the world more than Elyn.”

“Ah. So she does have a heart.”

“Have the cooks and the dancers prepare themselves. Thane Istair will be here quickly once he hears of the issued challenge.”

“Aye my lady. Then will I see to your preparations?”

“No, I will be attended.”

Viv rolled her eyes as though she were expecting that answer. “Very well. Sky Lady grant you victory.”

“Do you mean it Viv? Would you not prefer the hand of my brother to steer the horse?”

“You are fairer than he, calmer. You would steer us around obstacle he would crash us through. No my lady, you are the much better rein-master. Even if your tastes are somewhat…” Viv shot a sour glance to Cullen. “Rustic.”

Elyn smiled, “Thank you Viv. Prepare the healers, we will have need of them before night’s end.”

Elyn walked past Cullen to her tent, she met his eye with the barest of friendly glances before continuing on. A wordless beckon he followed dutifully and only noticed he was being pulled along like a pup on a leash by the time he got to the door.

Rage filled him, overpowered his good senses. He crashed into Elyn, knocking her to the floor, pinning both her wrists in his hands.

“I’m not a pup!” He cried.

Elyn looked comically confused. “I never called you thus. I told you that was a name for us alone. Pup.”

The nobleman snarled and clamped a cruel bite on Elyn’s shoulder. She wriggled a bit, crying out in pain, but he held her fast.

“You toy with me. I won’t have it.”

“What’s gotten into you? Calm yourself hound or I’ll have you…”

He bit her again, but measured his pressure so when she moaned it was born of that pleasing mixture of pain and pleasure. His need exploded at the sound and Cullen rolled his hips forward, grinding against her pushing her further into the floor. She moaned again and met his bucking hips with her own.

“Pup…” He clamped his free hand over her lips and brought his mouth to her ear.

“You insist on calling me dog, well now I’m going to fuck you like one. “

He drew back to gauge her face. Her eyes were wide, though not with fear but something else. Under him her thighs pressed together and if Cullen dipped his hands between them, he’d find her gushing.

“I think you like the idea of that, don’t you? The avvar princess fucked like a dog in heat. You want that.”

She moaned against his mouth and fidgeted wildly. Cullen enjoyed this very much, the tables had turned. He wasn’t going to let her rule him with her mouth on his cock or her thighs squeezing him to a sweet death. He’d show her, prove to her he was no toy, no diversion, no plaything for her to dally with and throw away.

No damnit.

No.

His heart wanted her too damn bad to let her discard him. He’d earn his place in her heart, make it bleed for him as she had done him. This was how. The only way he knew how.

He tested his theory, he slipped his hands down into her breeches past her smalls and found her soaked. With his hand still over her mouth he brought his wet fingers up, made them glisten in the light in front of her eyes then licked all the wetness away.

Her eyes rolled in her head and her back arched off the ground. She began moving her lips against his gagging hand, the muffled noises sounding curiously like pleas.

“Louder.” He released her mouth and clamped one hand around a breast the other going down back to cup her wet, hot, heat. “Let your men know who does this to you. And little girl, you better call me by my right name or I’ll make you regret it sorely.”

“Cullen!” She answered immediately opening her legs obscenely wide so he could get at more of her.

Clothing started flying off both of them. Moans and ragged screams mostly from her filled the tent as he applied his tongue to her body like a lash. Nipples, neck, breasts, and ears he worked until her brown flesh reddened from the attention. He left nail marks in her hips and thighs, teeth marks in her neck. He bit as hard as he thought she could take hoping to leave a mark. Mark her body like she marked his soul. She wasn’t going to leave him unchanged. They’d both burn for this, be scorched by one another. Cullen was determined to not let this end one sided.

His fingers worked the pearl at the apex of her sex, tapping it lightly before swirling around it. Getting close but never quite touching as hard or as often as she liked.

It made her whimper.

“Please. Cullen.”

It made her beg.

It made her beg him in the right name.

“There…more…please…Sky Lady take me more…”

“No lovely, I’m taking you. I’m fucking you. Me. Remember my name. Remember this feeling.”

He stopped his teasings and applied the softest touches to her creamy button. He dropped his voice as low as it could go and snarled in her ear as he worked Elyn close but not over her release.

“Remember my hands on you. When you’re having your war meetings, remember the feeling of my fingers up your delicious cunt. Remember me Elyn, when you walk about the camp like you own it. Remember who owned you right here right now.”

She writhed, tried to push her hips to get his hand where she wanted him, but his grip upon her was unyielding.

And she wasn’t really trying.

He dragged her to the precipice of oblivion inch by inch, fighting the urge in his body to flip her and fuck her desperately. He pulled her close to that edge but held her tight, and tighter still when he knew she was close.

“Remember me now as you _come_. And know that I _allowed_ it. Come Elyn, come little girl. Come for me, and scream my name.”

She obeyed.

Heartily.

She came hard and hollering before her voice broke off, body wracked by silent screams.

Another blur of flying bodies overtook them after that, animal brains superseding the more rational ones. Cullen came back to himself at key points during this coupling. Once, he had her head pressed to the ground ass in the air as he fucked her like a dog as so promised.

Another time, she was crowing him, writhing above him with his hands locked on her hips, forcing her hips down and his hips up.

Another time still, her hands were in his head, guiding his tongue like a map around her liquid satin flesh. “Right there, yes, yes lovely boy yes.”

And every time they came, they called each other the right names until they could voice nothing any further.

Elyn and Cullen collapsed into sleep tangled together, her brown and his blonde fused so tight they created a new color.

A lovely color.

**

When he woke, it was dark, and the voices outside announced the presence of Thane Istair and his wife Issa. He was alone on the bed though not alone in the tent.

Elyn was still here, bare chested and arms covered in white mud. She sat in front of what looked like a shrine. Red candles were lit and a curious spice smell overpowered the distinct smell of sweat and sex.

“If you’re awake Cullen. Would you mind helping me?”

He wrapped a fur around his waist and knelt behind her.

“Take the mud paint and cover my back with it. Several layers please, no part of my skin may show.”

Cullen dutifully picked up a glob of the stuff and began to smear it across her.

“You’re going to fight your brother.”

“Yes.”

“With what?”

“My bare damned hands. In challenges such as these we must prove the uncontestable strength of our bodies. Weapons augment and enhance, we must fight the same as we are born, covered in the blood of our mothers and bare handed. This white mud represents the fluids we came forth with.” She pointed to another bowl filled with red clay. “The red is the blood she shed for our lives.”

“You fight to the death?”

Elyn paused, her fingertips covered in a glob of paint meant for her neck and face. “Yes.”

“From what I hear, he sounds like an ass. You wouldn’t be glad to be rid of him?”

“He is my brother. Our mother gave her blood for both of us. That is our bond. It should be unbreakable. Do you have siblings Cullen?”

“I do. A brother, two sisters.”

“Do you love them even when they hurt you?”

He remembered when his mother died, how Mia had shouted and screamed at him. She blamed him for his mother’s death because she had been so heartbroken after he’d been caught _in flagrante delicto_ with Lady Leliana.

“You’re whoremongering killed our mother. All she wanted, all that would have made her happy was for you to get married to a respectable lady and give her grandchildren.”

“Mia! What if that’s not what I want!”

“Hang what you want! What _you_ want _killed our mother_!”

He formally proposed to Lady Cassandra after that, but Mia spat on him saying it was too late.

“Yes.” He answered Elyn, using the mud to cover the sinful curve of her spine.

“Then you understand.”

“What will happen?”

“If I win or lose?”

“Yes.” He gulped.

“If I win my brother will be dead. The only blood I have left. If I lose, I die. But on the bright side, you will be free of me.”

He covered her back in three layers of the mud, then followed her instruction to slash the red clay against her, making them look like bleeding tears in her flesh.

He watched in silence as she prayed in a language he didn’t know. She rocked forward and backward feeling the song with her entire body. She shuddered and shook, she screamed wailing as though pained. It took everything in him not to grab and hold her, caress her through the violence until she stopped.

But she stopped on her own and wiped the tears from her face.

She took a tender hand and wiped away his own tears, ones he wasn’t aware he had shed.

“Don’t lose.” He said.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on names.
> 
> I like cameos but the default names of some of our much beloved babies don't quite fit the culture. It'd be silly to have an avvar named Evelyn so she became Elyn. (El-EEN)
> 
> Maxwell became Axwe (pronounced Ax-uh)
> 
> Alistair became Istair  
> and Elissa became Issa.  
> (Double bonus note: Kaas is Afrikaans for cheese)
> 
> Also, that little bit with Dorian was self-indulgent and masturbatory as fuck and so I apologize, couldn't help it. That phrase was too damned good. I read it and was like 'yup, that's going in a fic.' And so here we are.


	3. Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Misogyny and Transphobia if you can catch it

Control.

Iron Bull was a creature of control. He had to be. He was a huge 6 foot everything qunari with fists the size of some men's heads. Shaking a person's hand could mean a trip to the healer if Iron Bull wasn't in control.

That's why, when the Boss became Thane, she picked him over her brother to lead her armies. Because he had a level of control Axwe didn't. Yeah it turned heads, after all he was still capital 'O' other even though Elyn and Thane Elyan had granted him clansman status for his years of faithful service. But most people got used to him, got used to the idea that he wasn't the qunari savage most people conceptualized him as.  
Because he had control.

He saw the look in Blackwall's eyes that night they saved the two lowlanders. Saw the way his naked stare had raked over the darker one, Dorian, as if he were trying to leave welts on the man with just his eyes.

That made his blood boil.

That the Orlesian horsefucker, for no reason at all, wanted to utterly destroy such a dainty and pretty thing. Dorian had bones like a bird and plumage to match, and all Blackwall wanted to do was ravage him until there was nothing left. He saw it in the man's eyes.

That made him loose control.

Almost.

Dorian himself would be the one to push the qunari way far over his carefully constructed and maintained edge.

Because he just wouldn't Shut. Up.

Taunting him, teasing him. Suggesting all matter of insane things just to get a rise out of his captor. And Iron Bull, if he was being honest with himself (and he always was, you have to in order to control yourself. No lies, no ego-preserving secrets, all naked, honest truth) gave back as good as he got. Taunting and teasing Dorian right back, pushing that horse cart just a little bit further to the edge of the cliff.

Then he said it.

Well they both said it.

Because if Iron Bull was being honest with himself (and he was) this was something that simmered in both their blood from the moment Iron Bull lifted that Tevinter ass out of the dirt when Blackwall fled.

“You stand there, flexing your muscles, huffing like some beast of burden, with no thought save conquest.”

Iron Bull growled, angered. This fucker had no idea what he had gone through. For him to reduce him down to the old stereotypes...

It grated heavily on his level of control.

So much so that he decided to snap just one fraying thread. Let the Bull rattle the cage a bit, that'll get the fucker to **SHUT**.  **UP.**

“That's right. These big muscled hands could tear those robes off while you struggled, helpless in my grip. I'd pin you down, and as you gripped my horns, I would conquer you.”

And then Dorian, pretty birdlike Dorian takes his rope of control and lit it on fucking fire.

  
“I'd like to see you try.”

They kissed like qunari black powder. It wasn't so much a meeting of lips as a battle of egos. Dorian actually bit him hard enough to draw blood which did absolutely nothing for Iron Bull's self-control. He thought, in medias res, he'd be able to get a rein in on the situation. Slow it down again, use his size to exert his will, his control.

But the problem was, Dorian _still_  didn't shut the fuck up.

"Yes," the Tevinter panted, making sounds that Bull had never heard before.

"Just like that. Harder, make me feel it in the morning."

Fuck.

Up until this point, all of Iron Bulls lovers made these little mewling noises, as though they were afraid to enjoy their pleasure with him--ashamed to let others know it was the qunari making them shout that way.

Dorian reveled in his pleasure, chasing it, racing Bull down the cliffside not giving a single fuck if the other man was following behind him.

Because Dorian decided to go into this impossible situation with two caveats in mind:

One: You don't get to break my things and shred my obscenely expensive clothes and enjoy a night's peaceful rest.

Two: If I'm to be a prisoner here, I'm sure as shit going to enjoy myself. Consequences be damned.

He slammed his ass down on Bull's cock, sending electrifying shivers up both their spines that made Dorian higher than a damn bird and terrified Bull out of his fucking mind.

Because it felt so good.

Wondrously, mindlessly good.

"Look how good you fit me, little bird, little peacock."

When Bull pushed up, Dorian pushed down...harder. Every little sensation they created, Dorian amplified just a little bit making Bull's mind careen off the deep end. The mageling never once said 'Ouch,', 'No,' or 'Stop." allowing Iron Bull the chance to glut in the loss of his control and it made him feel so damned guilty. No better than Blackwall. In the end, he still broke the pretty bird apart. They lost everything, damn near even their senses of self when they came. They exploded together like a dreadnought with a fire in the engine room.

He tried to make up for his abominableness afterwards, all sweets and softs. He cooed and whispered sweet things in qunlat as he cleaned them both up (and they were damned messy). He held the little bird as he trembled (both actually were trembling but hey, Bull's got to be allowed to lie to himself every once and a while right?)

And that was just the first night.

The next morning was slower, sweeter.

And it was Dorian who started it, feathering the most heart breaking of kisses to his shoulder and bicep (because that was as close as Dorian could reach.)

"Wake up," he murmured sleepily. "I'm bored, and you're horny." The mage giggled and it sounded like birdsong.

Dorian made him feel like a whore and a king and he loved it. Every single out of control minute of it.

"You feel like you have the weight of the world on you. What eats you Iron Bull?" Dorian asked, naked ass pressed obscenely into the Bull's hips. They were done for now, the ravens had been sent to Clan Kaas, and Elyn was preparing for her battle to the death.

The mageling wriggled in his grasp and turned to face him, concern etched into his features. "You look like it too. This is about the challenge isn't it?"

Bull didn't have to nod, Dorian saw it in his eyes--the good one and the bad one. He made Bull take off his eye patch.

"I can't get a good look at you with that thing on you. I want to see your face when I make you come. All of it." He demanded right before swallowing him whole without the slightest hesitation.

The gag reflex (or lack thereof) on this asshole.

He was surely going to kill him.

"What will happen to you if she loses?"

"Her brother will most likely try to kill me and Krem."

Dorian made a face, ashen and stricken.  
"Don't worry little peacock, I won't let anything happen to you."

"That face wasn't for me."

**

As they emerged from the tent a cheer went up from the gathered people. Cullen blushed to the roots of his curls. He knew better than to think they were cheering for the both of them but he allowed himself to slip into a fantasy of being the Lord to her Lady and what that might feel like.

Being the brother with the inheritance, Bann Rutheford made sure his oldest was well trained as a swordsman, sending him to the Chantry at a young age to seek Templar training before pulling him out right before he would have taken the vows—privilege and all that. He was educated by the best scholars in war, politics, and economy and he also inherited his mother’s knack for reading people, determining their strengths, weaknesses, and usefulness.

Using that talent now, Cullen liked Thane Istair immediately.

The man loved everyone and everything, as evident by the sunlight shaming grin he wore on his face when he kissed the babies, pet the puppies, and shook the hands of the warriors.

“Thane Elyn!” The ruddy headed pale-faced Thane swept Elyn up in a great bear hug, and the woman actually squealed with delight. “Put me down! You’ll smudge me!”

“Oh yes, Sky Lady forbid you mess up your makeup right before you get covered in blood hopefully not your own. And who’s this lowlander?”

“This is my guest Cullen Stanton Rutherford. Cullen, this is Thane Istair of Clan Kaas.”

Istair in a display of good will went to shake Cullen’s hand like a Ferelden grasping at the hand. In an opposite display of good will, Cullen went to shake Istair’s hand like an Avvar grasping at the forearms. The men collided awkwardly with their hands sliding up and down each other’s arms.

“Husband love, change your mind on me so quickly? And for a lowlander no less, I’m shocked.”

Lady Issa appeared, sauntered more like, flashing a toothy grin at her husband that set the Thane completely a-fluster. Istair abandoned hope of shaking Cullen’s hand and spun around away from him. “Of course not! Filthy straw-headed lowlander, he seduced me!” Istair cried to the ringing laughter of both women and Cullen’s own amused chuckle.

Istair, Issa, and Elyn walked away from him a bit, no doubt discussing the importance of such an occasion. The brother and sister of Clan Yan would fight each other to the death. Whatever happened tonight, Elyn loses. Either her brother or her life. Looking at her now, he couldn’t see that sorrow. She spoke with her fellow Thane and his wife as amiably as one would discuss the weather.

His heart swelled for her, bled for her too.

“I hope you fucked her well, lowlander.” A voice hissed in his ear. Cullen whirled around and found himself face to face with Axwe himself, painted in white mud, bright slashes of red clay across his face making him look like less a man and more a demon from his deepest nightmares. “I wouldn’t want her to meet the Sky Lady unsated.”

Cullen didn’t know what to say, he looked about for help but found no one who would come to his aid.

“Don’t worry though, straw head…after hers, yours will be the next head I…”

A heavy grey hand settled on Axwe’s shoulder. “You talk like that to him again and Boss lady won’t get the chance to kill you.”

Iron Bull. With Dorian close behind and yet again dreamy faced.

“Remove your hand filth. You and your man will be next after him.”

“You gotta win first. In fact, you gotta live to see the fight. Get the fuck outta here before I end this party early.” The qunari growled.

Axwe laughed darkly and went back to what looked like his cadre of supporters.

Both Cullen and Dorian wore twin expressions of fear. Iron Bull tenderly grabbed Dorian’s chin between his fingers and pulled the smaller man to face him. “Peacock. Remember, I’m not gonna let anything happen to you or your friend. You got my word on that.”

Dorian nodded mutely, still wholly unsure of how to deal with the level of affection this huge being was capable of. In private quarters he was all growling, demanding, borderline painful attentions--which he will admit he kind of goaded the Bull into. Yet afterwards he as interminably sweet with soft caresses, tickles, and sighs.

He was slowly becoming addicted to it...to him.

Well...not really that slowly...

A troupe of dancers screeched and drums sounded, the ceremonial dance began. Cullen took his seat next to Iron Bull, Dorian, Krem and Viv, staying as far away and hopefully out of sightline of Axwe. Elyn, however, took her seat on her throne of hide, leather, and bone. She looked stern faced and bored, every bit the stoic Barbarian Queen.

Thane Istair and Lady Issa sat on lesser seats next to her. Thane Istair clapping hilariously off beat with the drums while Issa rolled her eyes darting them between the Thane and Cullen, wheels no doubt turning in her observant head.

Elyn's eyes observed all, her allies and her people. She seemed to nod, pleased with what she saw, but she didn’t smile. Cullen noticed there was an empty seat next to her, he rose, walked across the field of dancers, and took the seat.

Elyn regarded him for a moment, completely bewildered before a bright and heart rending smile splashed across her white painted face.

“Come to join me, Cullen?”

“You looked lonely.”

“I was, though now not.”

They sat together while Elyn explained to him the tradition of the dance. He forgot more than he remembered, something about entreating the flames to judge the right combatant worthy. All Cullen really cared for was that she walked out of that ring alive. Lost in his thoughts, the Lady Issa hissed at him, poking his knee with her elbow.

“What in the Black Pits are you doing?”

If Lady Issa and Thane Elyn were sisters, Lady Issa would be the calm one--the wiser one. They looked much the same--skin and hair and eyes all within the darker spectrum of brown. But Lady Issa's eyes were measured wisdom while Elyn's eyes still held wisdom yet slightly less of it--a quirk perhaps of her comparative youth.

"What do you mean?"

"Your seat!"

"It was empty."

"Yes, it's for the Thane's consort you ass!"

Cullen paled and glanced about the crowd. Viv barely contained her scandalized rage while Iron Bull nudged Dorian, whispered something that caused the mage's face to brighten, then both men broke out into peals of laughter that Cullen knew in his bones were directed at him. Most of the people held the same expressions--amused humor, rank disgust (as in Axwe's case), or--most prominent in the younger members of the clan--open adoration bordering on wistfulness. Without meaning to, Cullen had made a claim to their Thane and to his growing... what exactly horror, delight? He didn't mind it.

How in the Void was going to explain that to his family?

Rather than contemplate that sticky revelation, Cullen rose to abandon the seat before Issa's wrist crushing grip forced him back down.

"The damage is done." She whispered casting a furtive glance to Elyn who was deep in conversation with Thane Istair. "To get up now would mean you reject our Lady." Issa saw the expression of mild panic on Cullen's face and lunged for his throat. "And I don't think you wanna do that. Do you?"

Cullen returned butt to chair.

"We've tried to get her on one of our clansmen for years now." Issa continued, jaws tearing at Cullen's heart like a midday meal. "She never found one worthy enough for her. But you--I've never seen such a smile on her face."

Elyn still sat reservedly on her throne, eyes glazed over and illuminated by the fire.

"She's not smiling." Cullen answered pointing to the obvious.

"Not in any way you can see lowlander. For her sake and yours, and not just for the safety of your lives, I hope she wins."

The drums and the dancers stop with a final screeching boom. Both combatants stood while Viv approached the circle chanting the invocation of battle.

Brother and Sister stared one another down, murder cast on his face in a red bloody light, sorrow illuminated on hers.

Then, Elyn turned, smile breaking across the lightless night like a burst of moonglow, took Cullen's face in her muddy hands, and kissed him.

When the people cheered this time, he knew it was for them both.

**

They both went into the ring, empty handed and bare-chested.

"After I kill you--whore-- I'll send all your friends after you." Axwe threatened.

"You have to actually kill me -- Little Brother."

Axwe lunged forward in a rage, fists swinging in brutal, wide arcs that Elyn dodged effortlessly.

Cullen white knuckled the arm rests on his chair, it was all he could do to stay seated.

One dodge avoided Axwe just a bit too early. The brother capitalized on the error, his fist opened into a cruel claw that grabbed a handful of his sister's hair and yanked her head back so fiercely Cullen feared for the bones in her neck.

No man, woman, child, or animal was allowed to make a sound so all could hear her scream of pain. She didn't scream long though, Axwe didn't let her. A violent chop to her exposed neck cut off the scream and replaced it gasping chokes. She fell on her back, vulnerable to Axwe's kicking blows.

"Is this how you service the lowlander, on your back you whore!?"

He kicked her in the ribs, the woman's arms up and over her head and neck to protect her, her screams ringing with every blow.

Cullen didn't realize he was standing and running toward the ring until Issa's hands were on him, pulling him back.

"Be silent and seated, lowlander! Anyone who steps in that ring now, their life is forfeit."

"I don't care!"

He pulled, exerting all his force against the Lady until another pair of hands pulled him back.

Thane Istair.

"As is the life of the one attempted to save."

Issa stared at her husband who stared back with a glare that screamed 'Work with me here woman!'

"R-right!" Issa agreed, covering up her husband's lie. Cullen didn't calm but he fell back, hands itching for a sword.

Elyn rolled in the dirt, avoiding a heel drop that would have crushed bone had it connected. She found her feet and spat her blood into the dirt. Axwe lunged again, she avoided him again.

Elyn knew her brother would come at her with all his rage, his hatred, and his humiliation. He would try to win the fight quickly, a preservation of his honor. Already shamed by having a female chosen over him, he could not let this challenge show just how much more powerful she was than him. He had to end it quickly, he'd throw all his power into his blows, attempt to crush and break her.

But she just kept moving.

"Afraid of me? Have you been afraid of me all this time?" Axwe shouted.

Elyn remained silent and kept on dodging.

"My only regret is that you won't get to see the light leave his eyes when I tear open his throat."

One blow fell too far forward. He finally tore open the weakness she was looking for.

She grabbed her brother by his overextended arm and pushed him farther forward, he stumbled, bent forward and her elbow crashed into the back of his neck. He wrenched free of her, vision swimming before she tackled him, trapping her older brother under her and keeping him there with her knees crushing the wind out of his chest.

Her fists fell upon him like rain during the wet season. She covered his head and chest with powerful bone cracking blows. Left hook, right jab over and over again and the only sound louder than the wet gurgle that came from Axwe's throat was her roar.

"You."

Punch.

"Will not."

Knee to the chest.

"Touch."

Another punch, she felt his skull crack.

"Him!"

Last punch, he went limp under her.

The violent rain passed as all rain does. She rose from the bloody corpse of her brother. She touched him, he didn't respond.

She put her ear to his chest.

No breathing.

Elyn turned her face to the sky and wailed.

As long as both combatants were in the ring, the fight was not over. The clan watched Elyn mourn her foolish and dead brother, murdered by her hand. It didn't matter that this was done in service to the ancient laws of her clan. The covenant of blood was broken.

Elyn pulled herself out of the dirt, wobbly, she took one too many blows to the head. She looked for him, her pup, her straw head, and saw him, straining against Istair and Issa's hands no longer because he wished to save her, but because he wished to hold her.

She smiled at him, blood in her teeth and he didn't flinch from her bloody, horrid visage.

He smiled back and the world melted away to just them.

She opened her arms and he made to run into them, to pick her up and swing her around like a princess in a fairy tale because there was no one else in the world and he didn't care.

But she saw him pull up short. She saw his face twist from love to horror.

Elyn was a good warrior, a smart one. She knew what was going on, and Iron Bull's high, sharp, shout confirmed it.

Elyn turned around, fists raised up to protect her head from one of Axwe's blows.

But he wasn't swinging for her head with his fist.

He was swinging for her chest.

With a blade.

And he caught her in the gut with his dagger, no doubt concealed in his boot, driving it so deep it came out the other side.

Her brother smiled, delighting in the way her eyes rolled to the back of her head as she died, before spitting in her face, calling her a whore, and delivering one more cruel sneer to the lowlander.

Then he twisted the knife, took an obscene pleasure in the wet sound it made, and fled.

Addox and Delrin covered his escape.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sigh.


	4. People of the Heart

As his world was consumed by her when she opened her arms to him, it was wiped away from him when she fell.

Elyn tumbled to the dirt with no sound, the life struck out of her as though taken by a lightening flash from the sky.

Viv, Iron Bull, Cullen, everyone started to shout, but Cullen got to her first, hauling her body up and off the ground, the knife still sticking from her stomach.

"No, baby no. Please."

Viv arrived next, hands wreathed in green. "To the tent, get her to the tent."

Blood gushed so thick from her wound, it dripped down his arms and legs, slicking the tread on his boots. Iron Bull, Krem, and Dorian flanked them immediately as did a handful of Thane Istair's men armed with spears and hand axes.

Horses were saddled and waiting for Axwe and the others he took with him when he fled. Altogether they lost maybe a third of their fighting men. Thankfully not the best of them as those warriors were now ringed around the lowlander, the auger, and their Thane, ready to defend all three with life and limb.

"Sky Lady strike him from the earth! That bastard planned this." Istair howled. "My guardsmen will protect the camp, in case the little snake decides to attack."

Cullen didn't hear the rest, his vision and hearing cued in on her, searching desperately for any sign of life from the body hanging limp and bleeding in his arms.

He carried her to the tent and placed her on the furs.

"Is ...is she?"

Viv either did not hear, or did not wish to answer. The woman and her healers stormed around and about the tent, tinctures and magicks and fingers flying, all working on restoring the life to their Thane.

They crowed him out, pushed him aside and back. Some sneered at him, muttering curses under their breath.

"Filthy lowlander."

"This is his fault."

"Move! You're in the way."

He sat back on his heels, helpless.

_I am owed this_. He thought.

His sins were abundant and now abundantly clear. The Maker had sent him to this place, allowed him to fall desperately in love with this woman, and then snatched her away to teach him humility.

Cullen did not know if the Maker would hear him in this place where the Sky Lady was ascendant, so he prayed to both, begging with all he had for one god or both to save her.

"Though all before her is shadow,  
Yet shall the Lady be her guide.  
She shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond.  
For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light  
And nothing They have wrought shall be lost."

**

The junior healers left one by one leaving Auger Viv alone with Cullen and Thane Elyn.

They washed her body in silence, sliding wet cloths up and down her arms, neck, chest, and face, cleaning her of the mud, clay, and blood that had stuck to her skin.

Elyn lay cool and unresponsive under their touch, a body being prepared for burial.

"The wound is sealed." Viv said after their grim task was completed. "The trauma healed as best as my skill allows. But the damage has been done, and only the Sky Lady knows if she will recover. Her heart beats, praise the Lady, but life has yet to return to her."

Viv groaned and fell forward, exhaustion overtaking her.

Cullen reached for Viv and set her back upright, the woman regarded the man with the kindest face he'd ever seen on her.

"Thank you."

Unable to find words in his grief, Cullen only nodded.

"You should not be here. You or the Tevinter. Take two horses and leave this place. She cannot protect you any longer."

"I don't want her protection. I don't care about my safety."

"You love her don't you?"

Cullen couldn't put a voice to his answer, but the look that never wavered from Elyn's face answered for him.

Viv made a soft noise that could have been approval or disapproval. "Why?"

Cullen thought of all his lovers, the ones he left crying, the ones with the broken hearts. He tried, or thought he tried, to be tender with them. To hold their glass hearts carefully in his hands while they fumbled about in the dark. But he always dropped them, sometimes meaning to, sometimes not, sometimes uncaring one way or another.

Cullen thought if he kept searching, he'd find one he wanted to hold on to; something that would make him feel like he had a heart. Something that would make it beat with more than just the dull rhythm of everyday life. The one heart he cared about breaking. He tore through women looking for that feeling--that heart, indifferent to the destruction he sometimes wrought.

Until destruction was wrought upon him.

Elyn came, literally falling from the sky as though sent by the Maker.

Elyn saved his life, an avenging angel with snake-like hair for a halo, fur and leather her wings. She loved her people, cared for them in word and deed. She earned their respect; they felt pride when they called her Thane. She was beautiful, deadly, sweet, and strong.

And she had ripped his own glass heart from his chest, kissed it tenderly with plum colored lips and then smashed it. Ruined him utterly, gave him everything he had been craving unknowing, uncaring, or indifferent to the spell she cast upon him.

Just like he had with everyone else.

"Most of my adult life, I have been a selfish person. I took from others and gave nothing in return. I'd give everything I am to her in return for nothing but a smile." Cullen confessed with a sigh.

Vivienne hummed appreciatively at the confession but remained silent. Together the pair watched over Thane Elyn, both pairs of eyes locked like a tidal pull to the rising and falling of her chest.

Vivienne finally succumbed to her exhaustion. Cullen, knowing nothing else to do, threw a fur over her and allowed the woman to rest. He took her place and resumed his vigil.

When his body finally slipped under fatigue's spell, he slept fitfully plagued by nightmare's of screaming and the bloody snarl on Axwe's face as he twisted his foul knife.

Dorian, the Iron Bull, Krem, Thane Istair and Lady Issa visited the next day, keeping their voices low and quiet as they tried to decide what to do next.

“I haven't seen that blighted bastard, but he's crafty. He may attack with the men he stole.” Lady Issa said, counselling with the Iron Bull and his lieutenant.

“We'd be able to fight him,” Krem answered. “But it'd be pretty bloody, the bulk of his soldiers are average, but he did take our two best warriors. Present company excluded.” Krem joked trying to make the Cheif crack a smile.

Iron Bull didn't so much as even twitch. The situation was precarious, out of control. He didn't like that, it itched under his skin, it burned when he thought of what might happen to Dorian if the worst should come to pass. “I'll have the warriors prepare for a siege and you get the non-combatants prepared to flee to the mountain tunnels in case things go pear shaped. If I know the Boss, she wants her people saved at the cost of everything else.”

Cullen paid little attention to the planning going on over his head not even noticing when Iron Bull and the rest took their leave to put their plans into action. His sole concern was the woman lying unconscious in her bed of furs. It was only now that he could see how tiny she was, dwarfed completely by pelts of bears, wolves, and harts. So small yet so fierce.

"Why...why are you still...here?"

Viv and Cullen turned their heads to the body stirring between them.

"My lady!"

"Elyn!"

Her eyes fluttered open, whiskey watered down by pain. "You should have fled when I fell."

Cullen gasped, swallowing down tears of gratitude. The thanked both gods. He thanked _all_ the gods, even running through the list of the Elven gods he could remember.

"I'm not leaving you. Not now, not ever."

She shook her head slowly. "Viv, give us a moment or several."

The auger nodded . "I will alert Iron Bull."

A looked passed between the two women before Viv squeezed Cullen's shoulder. "She is fragile now. She must rest."

Cullen blushed, and Viv actually laughed as she departed.

The nobleman nearly fell upon her, desirous to crush her under the weight of his affection. He drew close to press a thankful kiss to her temple but Elyn, against her mind’s better judgement and her body’s pain, lifted herself up just a bit to capture his mouth. She kissed him well, kissed him hard, kissed him like a dying woman.

Cullen felt the desperation in the woman’s kiss and pulled from her alarmed.

“Elyn…what…?”

"Do you miss your home Cullen?"

The almost Templar blushed, in their time together they hadn’t really talked about his home or family. "Certain parts of it. The food mostly."

Elyn gave the strongest smile she could manage that was still fringed with pain. "And your family?"

He remembered Mia’s snarl, the hate in her voice. "Certain parts of them."

"And your woman?"

He could endure questions about his home and his family, but he had to look away when she asked him about that. "I don't have one." He lied, knowing she knew he was lying.

“Silly pup.” She chided gently. "I took a gold loop from you the first night you were here. Do you not love her?"

"No." Their eyes met, shining and full so many unsaid, unutterable things.

"Why?"

"She is not you."

In 30 years, he told many girls many times he loved them. He let those three words fall from his lips as the wine fell from the bottles before and after such words were said. Those four words now, meant more love than anything he had ever said previously.

Elyn shook her head again. "Foolish, pup."

"I'm not a dog damnit! I'm a man who loves you!"

"This is why you are foolish."

"Boss!"

Iron Bull stormed into the tent sweaty and heaving his great-axe. "Axwe comes up the mountain, with Blackwall!"

Elyn’s eyes rolled in her skull, the news sending shocks of pain rippling through her form.

Viv, Dorian and Krem arrived all panting, the same terror struck across their faces.

The Thane’s mantle settled back onto her prone shoulders, the weight sitting even more uncomfortably now. Being a Thane did not mean she lorded over her people, they ruled her. She was their servant. And Elyn knew it was time to offer up her life in that service.

"Viv!” She snapped, summoning fire in her mouth. “Give them all horses Bull and Krem too. Get them out of the village and down the mountain before Blackwall and his bandits can close off the pass and trap us."

"I ain't going anywhere Boss, feast or famine, you know I fight with you."

"And I'm with the chief. Thane Elyn. We've always been your clan, you know that." Krem pledged.

From her sickbed Elyn smiled, tears breaking the bonds of her lashes and running freely down her face. "Then get the lowlanders out."

"Like hell!" Dorian roared. Pretty bird puffed his chest and in that moment looked more hawkish than songbird. The Iron Bull’s chest pulled tight, equal parts proud and fearful. "Give me a staff, I can fight."

Cullen agreed. "We'll fight with you!"

"Even with Thane Istair's men, Blackwall has too many soldiers and he has some of our best. Ones that know how to pick apart our defenses and strategies. Even...even if we can win. You would be the first to fall. Killed to curry favor or to deal a blow to me. I can't... I won't."

"Dorian." The Iron Bull remembered Blackwall and the look in his eyes. "No."

“Oh now you tell me n—“

Bull made the mage shut up with an arm around his neck and their mouths pressed together in a protective, desperate, hungry kiss.

Elyn nodded to Viv who produced a gold loop from her robes, the auger handed it to Cullen. She had made Viv save it, knowing it was far too precious to cast aside.

"I have been selfish.” Elyn placed shaking hands on the sides of Cullen’s face. “I have been a silly little girl who found a beautiful, bratty, and sweet pup by the roadside. I brought him home and fell in love with him, but I cannot keep him. It is not safe here and he is not mine to keep. For that, I am sorry Lord Cullen Stanton Rutherford. Your woman must be beside herself with grief. Were you mine, I know I would be. Return to her. Love her well. And think of me no more."

Cullen surged forward to kiss her, tell her no with lips and tongue and hope that would convey the conviction in his heart. Elyn allowed it, eyes slipping closed to enjoy the last bit of him she could have.

She opened her eyes and nodded to Viv, mouth still sealed to her beautiful, foolish Cullen.

Viv stalked silently behind them, as silent as the sleep spell wreathed around her fingertips. She tapped both Dorian and Cullen on the head. Dorian fell immediately, going limp like a boned fish in Bull's arms.

“Fly away little bird.” Bull muttered into the mage’s temple.

Cullen fought the magic, templar training overtaking him. But the spell was as determined as its lady.

"Be safe and well and happy my avva," he heard her say as he fought and lost the fight to stay awake, to hold on to her.

"Avva.." he slurred, body freezing up in sleep paralysis. His arms fell around her, his forehead coming to rest against her chest as a lover’s would locked in sweet sleepy embrace. Elyn breathed him in, inhaling the scent of his golden hair and relishing the weight of him atop her even though it caused her such great pain. "Wha ...doe...ean?

"Heart." She answered as his vision blackened. "Avva means heart."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was short but I figured I kept y'all waiting long enough.
> 
> I have no idea what 'avvar' means. I am making shit up and I don't care.


	5. Avva

He woke to two different sensations at once-- the feeling of gravel against his face and the vibration of approaching galloping hooves.

 

Cullen heard Dorian's groan and joyous shouts in the distance.

 

“Ser Rutherford!”

 

“Brother!”

 

“Beloved!”

 

**

Axwe growled, disgusted and frustrated. The village was empty and it had taken the better part of an hour to hack through the wall of destroyed huts that blocked the path.

 

“You better deliver on your promise _Thane_ Axwe. I want that Tevinter, I want your sister’s treasure, and the land we agreed on.” Blackwall spat, picking through the emptied out village.

  
Upon the death of the Thane, the camp had been cleared out, robbing the pair of their conquest. Axwe reasoned they couldn’t be too far away, Iron Bull can’t command the obedience of the people without his whore sister to temper his words.  
  


“You will receive all that and more Blackwall.” Axwe sneered.

 

_And a knife in the neck when this is all over you bastard.  
_

“My brother promises things he does not have!” A voice rang out from ahead. From behind the burning eternal fire, Elyn emerged, bow strung across her back, face painted red and black for war.

 

A murmur of fear ripped through the traitorous warriors of Clan Yan, their defection bought on the price of Elyn’s life.  
  


“Blackwall, leave now while I allow you to walk away.”  
  


“Pretty words for a corpse!” The bandit leader bellowed back.  
  


“Warriors!.” Elyn shouted. “Abandon this folly. How much can you trust the man who failed to ki—“  
  


Whatever inspiring words Elyn intended to say were cut off by a lighting strike of pain ripping up her sides. Everyone could see her body buckling under the weight of her injury, she shouldn’t even be breathing hard let alone trying to stop a massacre.  
  


“See! She is weak. She can be killed. Remember why we’re here brethren!” Axwe rallied, turning to face the cadre of warriors. “Kill the whore, and your hut will never be far from the fire!”  
  


An arrow sliced through the air whistling death too close to Axwe's head but not close enough to pierce it. Iron Bull bellowed, axe flashing in the sunlight.  
  


He saw Blackwall's bearded face, he'd heard the bandit's demands.  
  


The Iron Bull lost control.  
  


War exploded within the confines of Clan Yan's fall encampment. Thane Istair and his Lady Issa charged with their men, executing the ambush the leaders planned. Even caught unawares, Blackwall's men rallied and turned to face the onslaught, their numbers far superior and better armed than the avvar's own.  
  


The Lady Issa took a wound and Thane Istair immediately threw down his sword, picked up his wife and fled to the relative safety of the mountain tunnels.

 

"Nope! Nope! Nope!"  
  


Elyn shot her arrows from within a ring of warriors all pledged to die before they let their Thane be further injured. Krem led these warriors, his sword high and strong, stabbing at anyone who came close.  
  


Even Delrin.  
  


“Avva!” Came Addox's anguished cry.  
  


Her bowstring hummed with every arrow's flight, but as time went on, her shots got less and less accurate, her fatigue, pain, and heartbreak sapping the life from her.  
  


Axwe pulled a sword out of another warrior's guts, dodged the freezing spell Viv and her augurs slung towards him, and advanced on his sister and her honor guard.  
  


Iron Bull cornered Blackwall and the two fought bitterly, trading wound for wound, carving each other up like roast pig at a feast. The bandit leader taunted Bull endlessly.  
  


“I'll have your horns from you ox-man. One to drink my ale from and one to shove up that Tevinter's pretty backside!”  
  


Red raw murder clouded the qunari's vision and he swung madly, safe in the knowledge that Dorian was far from Blackwall's hands.  
  


Pandemonium raged across the camp, men and women on both sides lay dying in the snow and dirt. Brother fought sister, lover fought friend. Addox cradled Delrin, dead in his arms, and wondered if any of this was worth it.  
  


To Thane Elyn, none of this was worth it.  
  


Only Krem remained of her guard and the faithful man had taken a grievous wound to his stomach. Elyn kept her eyes sharp for her brother hoping that one well placed arrow would end the carnage but her wound had torn open, her life's blood leaking into the snow and she hadn't placed an arrow well since the fight began.  
  


She was the Thane, she protected the lives of her people. In this she had failed.

 

Perhaps then, her brother had always been right—she was not fit to lead.  
  


Krem kept sword and shield high as Axwe emerged from the din of battle to find them again. Her brother grinned triumphantly knowing what Elyn already knew.

  
Krem, the last of her honor guard, screamed and started to charge, but Elyn knocked the warrior unconscious with a strike to the back of her head with the curve of her bow.

 

Screams and shouts, metal clanging cries filled her ears. Shouts of war, shouts of the dying. Already broken, her heart fractured further. Thane Elyn turned a tear stained but resolute face to her brother.

 

"You are an oathbreaker, Axwe, but make one last promise to me now. My head in exchange for the lives of our people. Continue this and you will have no clan to rule."

 

Axwe smiled cooly, "You have my word, whore." The slur bounced off her, she had no pride to wound.

 

"Krem, Iron Bull, their lives are to be spared as well. Swear it!"

 

"I swear." She didn't believe the solemnity in his voice but she had no other option. If she continued, her people would assuredly fight to the last and die to the last. If she surrendered they might be spared. She'd lay down her life on a might rather than keep it on an assured.

 

More screaming. More shouting. More dying. Somewhere, someone was calling her name.

 

Elyn, unhearing, dropped to her knees before Axwe, something made easy by the flashing, burning, pain in her guts.

 

"Let it be known that I, Thane Elyn of Clan Yan give up my life to save the lives of my clan. Sky Lady judge me whole and pure but do not keep me. Send me to the lowlander's sky where I will wait for him."

 

Axwe seized a handful of his sister's hair and brought her neck close to the tip of his blade. "I'll find him, wherever he rests, wherever he has fled, and I'll send him to you screaming."

 

Fear gripped her final breaths but she made no sound. Thane Elyn closed her eyes and pictured Cullen, his face, his eyes, and his smile. She smiled as her brother prepared his strike.

 

The blade slid through flesh easily, like ice melting in the wake of a fierce flame. Hot blood spilled down Elyn's neck and chest but she felt no pain.

 

As it was not her blood.

 

Elyn heard her brother's choking gasp and opened her eyes to see a lowlander sword piercing his belly. The light in her brother's eyes were gone and he fell limp around the blade that killed him. A booted foot kicked the body away revealing golden hair and golden eyes twisted in a face transitioning from bloody anger to sweet relief.

 

"Elyn!"

 

**

 

Elsewhere, the muscles in Iron Bull's arms and back screamed now with every swing of his axe. Nimble Blackwall had dodged every fatal blow and inflicted more than what he took. The Bull's great heart stuttered in his chest and his vision clouded at the edges. _Can’t take too much more of this,_ he thought.

 

No more of this actually.

 

Mid-swing Iron Bull’s weapon faltered in his hands and he collapsed, body falling to the snow with thunderous crash. Eyes gazed up to glimpse the midday sky, grey like the color of his eyes. He heard Blackwall's dark laugh and heard the zinging buzz of a sword strike.

 

Then the Iron Bull heard birdsong.

 

Bilious green magic seized up Blackwall's body, making it clench and spasm painfully. Another song of mana struck him again, immolating him.

 

Blackwall screamed in agony before a bolt of electricity struck him soundless, dead.

 

"Iron Bull!"

 

**

 

The chevalier's routed Blackwall's bandits, the latter having broke rank and scattered once they heard the death wails of their master. Some fled, most others were captured, rounded up by Michel de Chevin and his soldiers.

 

The defectors of Clan Yan, those still living, slipped away amidst the carnage and confusion. Addox at their head, bearing away the body of his husband, bloody vengeance sworn upon his heart.

 

Viv emerged from the haze of battle screaming for the Thane. Her healers dispersed treating all the injured as best they could, while a runner was dispatched to the mountain tunnels to instruct the rest that it was safe to emerge.

 

**

 

She was perfect. In form, manner, and deed the Lady Cassandra Allegra Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast was utterly perfect. Milk white pale skin, hair dark chestnut and glossy even in the grey light of the day, even the mincing steps she took to emerge from the carriage was perfect.

 

The perfect lady.

 

That lady was now horrified to see her betrothed emerging from battle's end bloodied and supporting a body more wound than woman, her arm slung around his shoulder.

 

And he was smiling. Pleased as if he were on a garden stroll.

 

Her heart soared when they found him and Altus Pavus in the road, the Rutherford children and her coming to oversee personally the search efforts for their missing loved one. She had been confused when he insisted they take their contingent of soldiers back up the mountain, pleading almost on bended knee that he had to go back and save the lives of his barbaric captors.

 

"No! They saved my life and Dorian's. We must go back! She'll...they'll die!"

 

In the end, it did not take too much work to convince their soldiers to go. Blackwall had been a criminal that had eluded Michel de Chevin for years now and Thane Elyn had always been an on again, off again ally.

 

Now that the fight was over, she would take her beloved and leave this Maker forsaken place.

 

**

 

It was no easy task to get Iron Bull back on his feet. Krem, awakened from his blow to the head, had to help Dorian, both men grunting and straining to lift the qunari up and off the ground. His wounds were bad, but the modicum of training Dorian had in restoration spells were enough to return him to consciousness and staunch the bleeding

 

And the first thing the Bull did was grab Dorian by the neck.

 

"You should not," he struggled to breathe, trembling, overwhelmed with the what-ifs and what could have been's if Dorian wasn't strong enough to overpower Blackwall. "You should not be here."

 

Dorian laughed even as the grey hand squeezed. "I do what I want and go where I please. You could never hope to control me."

 

**

 

Cullen had to let go of his hold on Elyn as his brother two sisters and Cassandra overwhelmed him with hugs and kisses.

 

"Thank the Maker you're safe!" Rosalie sighed clutching at her oldest brother as though her touch were the only thing keeping him grounded in the world.

 

"Damn Cull, good show making these barbarian's feel the might of Ferelden steel!" Branson exclaimed.

 

Cassandra squeezed his wrist and smiled but offered no other words except those in praise of the Maker for his safe deliverance.

 

Mia stood back, arms crossed over her chest looking annoyed and bored. He couldn't hear their exclamations and only offered half-hearted replies to their questions. He kept glancing back at Elyn who released him to his family with a heartbreaking ease. She stumbled on her feet a little bit before Viv was at her side, holding her up with green hands around her waist.

 

Her people assembled around her, touching her, thanking her, crying at their losses. Thane Istair and Issa congratulated her victory but were mindful of its cost, the gaping wound in Issa's side testament to that.

 

"We'll take our leave of you now Thane," Michel said.

 

"Go in peace," Elyn slurred, weakness eating up the strength of her words. "Our lives are indebted to you."

 

"No, thank your Dog Lord over there, he was the one who convinced us to come. You should have seen him, by the way he pleaded you'd have thought Andraste herself was in peril."

 

Elyn smiled weakly. "Sky Lady guide you."

 

Michel de Chevin bowed extravagantly and took his leave.

 

"Oh thank the Maker." Mia exclaimed. "Let us depart as well. Altus Pavus, Rylen...he sends his regards. However, you are welcome to ride home with us."

 

Dorian snorted angrily, but before disgust and a bout of mild depression could overtake him, a bright smile washed across his face. A roguish smile, a mischevous one, something that made Iron Bull's heart race with fear because it meant the mage was cooking up something big and scary and _wonderful_.

 

"Thank you for the offer Lady Rutherford, but I'm not going." The Rutherford siblings and their older brother fell into a shocked silence. The Iron Bull too.

 

Dorian stepped out from under Bull's shoulder and approached his best friend. "Go back home but leave me here."

 

"Dorian, your family..." Cullen protested.

 

"Tell them I died, tell them whatever you like I don't care. You heard what your sister said. 'Rylen sends his regards.' That's double-speak for, you're good enough to fuck but when I need you, you're inconvenient, a scandal. It has always been so, even with my family. Here, I won't be. Here I can be me. I don't have to put on a show or marry the girl." Dorian spared a glance at the Iron Bull who looked about ready to die of joy. "I don't have to spend my entire life screaming on the inside."

 

The mage turned to Thane Elyn. "My lady Thane, what would it take to make me a member of the clan? So long as it doesn't involve too much fur and leather and I have the opportunity to bathe more than once a month, I'll do just about anything."

 

Thane Elyn nodded and summoned the rest of her strength to declare. "The lowlanders have saved our lives a debt that can never be repaid. Let it be known that Dorian of House Pavus is and will forever be our brother."

 

Iron Bull knees buckled and he made a sound that was a laugh crossed with a sob, Krem struggled to hold him up. "Lady’s knickers, Chief, keep it together you big sap."

 

Rosalie sighed wistfully and Branson cheered. Cassandra stood by passively and Mia snorted almost in disgust. "As you will Altus. Cullen, let's go."

 

Cullen spared a glance back to see Dorian smiling as he pulled the Iron Bull into an embrace that made the almost magister the happiest he had ever seen the man. Elyn, Viv, and Krem all smiled while the people cheered. Happiness somewhat restored after a day of grief.

 

That grief returned to him as he let his family lead him away, his gold betrothal ring clinking against Cassandra's engagement ring like a bell tolling the hours to his death. He was happy to see his family again and his heart swelled that they had thought enough of him to make his rescue personal, even Mia. His father was absent, but just as well, he put up a considerable sum of money to hire the de Chevin to find him.

 

His family loved him and they loved him back.

 

He should be content, happy even. He could return to his wealth and comfort and file his encounter with the Thane among the many such encounters of his life. He could even tell his friend Varric of his adventure. Won’t that make a tale; the barbarian princess and the nobleman, the books would fly off shelves.

 

This should be enough.

 

Cullen's eyes met Elyn's, within them he saw warmth and a soft unspeakable sadness mirrored in his heart.

 

The nobleman stopped walking.

 

"Wait."

 

"Beloved?" Cassandra questioned.

 

"Cassandra, I'm sorry. I can't. I can't go. I'm staying here--that is-- if the Thane will have me too?" Cullen cast a hopeful glance towards Elyn whose heart froze and locked up in her chest. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't even nod.

 

"I...I ..."

 

Iron Bull snickered into Dorian's hair. He never heard the Boss stammer before.

 

"Yes." Viv answered for her grinning. "She will."

 

Before his heart could sore and lift off, it soured a bit, preparing itself for the last distasteful thing he had to do. A couple more hearts left to break.

 

He turned back to Cassandra and extracted his hand from hers, removed his betrothal ring, and clasped it up in her open hand. "I'm so sorry. I can't do this."

 

Rosie gasped and Branson whistled low.

 

"Do what?" Cassandra asked bewildered.

 

"Do what!" Mia echoed, voice rising into a shrill roar.

 

"This-- you and I--marriage. I can't."

 

"But..." Cassandra sputtered, a humiliated flush creeping into her cheeks. "Why ever not. We are...the match is... we would be..."

 

"Perfect, I know. I don't want that."

 

"How could...I don't understand."

 

"I don't love you Cassandra."

 

The woman laughed. "Nor I you as this was never about love. This was about honor, and duty. Duty to our families. Duty to the Maker, first and foremost. Then...in time, if the Maker saw fit to grant us contentment..."

 

"As wonderful and as caring as you are though...I don't want contentment. I want sloppy and messy. I want anger and hurt, I want all the good things and the bad things. I want to scream and fight and shout. I want..."

 

"Her," Cassandra sighed sadly. "You want her." She pointed back to the Thane.

 

Cullen's mouth stopped up--he flushed but his gaze never wavered from Cassandra's furious stare.

 

"Yes," he answered unashamedly.

 

Cassandra stepped back, her eyes wet. "I understand."

 

"You're ...you're not upset?"

 

"Oh no, I'm furious. But it took courage to do what you've done. I hope the Maker grants you what you seek."

 

Lady Pentaghast removed her own ring and flung the two of them down the mountain, uncaring of where they landed. She spared her former betrothed a tight smile and left him to gather herself into the carriage.

 

Mia however, was having none of it.

 

"How dare you!" She screamed bearing down on her brother. "How dare you insult the Pentaghasts like that!? Do you have any idea what such an insult would merit us? Do you not care for your family at all?"

 

"I do but Mia please..."

 

"No. Shut up! You don't get to speak. It's bad enough you kill our mother but you do worse by seeking to destroy our good name by taking up with that barbarian whore!"

 

"Mia," Cullen growled. "Stop it, you're embarrassing yourself."

 

"As you have embarrassed us! How do you know you won't get tired of her cunt like you have so many others?"

 

"Mia! It's not like that."

 

"Oh, so you deny that you've fucked her? I wonder what magic lies between her thighs that would make you forget yourself, your Maker, and your family!"

 

"I love her damnit!" Cullen hollered back.

 

Mia belly laughed as if it was the most absurd thing she's ever heard. "Love? I'm convinced you can't even spell the word let alone understand its meaning."

 

"I'm willing to let her teach me." His face burned but he wouldn’t let Mia intimidate him, not anymore. He meant every word, and with every word he stared back at his fuming sister.

 

Mia scoffed. "It's a miracle mother is already dead for this would surely kill her."

 

"No." Branson interjected. "Mama would want him to be happy. Let it go, Mia, let him go. Did you see him when we were down the mountain? Have you ever seen our brother so worked up?"

 

Rosalie nodded tearing up. "It's true, he cares about her. You can see it in his face. Let him be."

 

"When father hears, he's going to march right up this mountain and drag you back home by your insufferable hair!" The eldest Rutherford snarled.

 

"Let him come then." Elyn appeared beside him eyes wet but burning like the eternal flame she worshiped. "I'd like to see a lowlander try to take from me a member of my clan!"

 

“Silence blighted whore, this is family business!”

 

“Mia! Enough!” Cullen roared.

 

Mia raised an open hand and tried to slap her brother. Elyn caught that hand in her wrist, smirked and shook her head. “Uh uh honey.”

 

"Maker take you both!" The elder sister hissed, wrenching her hand free before returning to the carriage, spitting in her fury.

 

The carriage door slammed, echoing in Cullen's heart.

 

"Small wonder why you'd want to leave." Thane Istair joked poorly.

 

"We...we better get going Branson, Mia is like to leave us behind." The younger sister enveloped her brother in a big hug. "Can I visit? Please let me come visit. Honnleath will be insufferable without you."

 

Cullen kissed his sister goodbye, hugging her tightly, fighting back tears of nostalgia as he remembered their games of Templars and Abominations. “Bye Rosie, I… you…”

 

"You will always be welcome." Elyn answered and was shocked when Rosie hugged her too. "Keep him in line!" She winked before leaving.

 

Branson stepped forward and shook the Thane's hand before pulling close to his brother whispering. "So uhh...she...um...what's...she..."

 

"Mind-blowing... literally." Cullen grinned as his younger brother tried to steal a furtive stare at the woman. Elyn caught him and grinned, licking her lips suggestively.

 

Branson whistled appreciatively. "She got a sister?"

 

"Go before both your sisters skin you alive!"

 

Branson chuckled and walked back to the carriage.

 

Cullen watched his family leave, bittersweet but happy.

 

"Copycat." Dorian hissed in his ear.

 

"Great minds think alike my friend."

 

"Do you have any idea what we've gotten ourselves into? We're avvar now."

 

"Do you care?"

 

A grin crept across Dorian's face. "Not in the slightest."

 

**

 

They gave them huts in the inner ring, and piled upon them furs and leather, trinkets and gifts to honor them for the help they provided. Their homes were fully furnished by day’s end. A few young girls heaped upon Cullen's head crowns of dried flowers and stole kisses from him giggling before fleeing in the Thane's growling wake.

 

Nobody dared approach Dorian with the Iron Bull so close beside him. Not that either would have noticed the stares of admiration, having lost themselves completely in each other.

 

Dorian would not have the chance to spend his first night, second, or third in his own dwelling.

 

Elyn threatened to move Bull's hut down the ring if he didn't keep down the racket.

 

To apologize then for their apparent rudeness, Bull clamped a hand over Dorian's mouth as he moved inside of him, brutal pace causing tears to leak from the corner of Dorian's eyes. The mage moaned against his mouth biting and nipping the stifling hand hoping the qunari heard him when he shouted 'more' and 'harder'.

 

Dorian gripped Bull's horns and held on for dear life and immortal soul and loved every burning second of it. His seed dried sticky between them as he rode the Bull, cock hard and ready to spill again.

 

The qunari bit his tongue to bleeding trying to keep down his shouts but Dorian, with hands sweet and soft, removed the large hand from his mouth and cooed to his lover.

 

"Fuck 'em, amatus. And fuck me. Let me hear you scream it. Lose it, I need you to. Fu-ck--"

 

Iron Bull cried out like a man stabbed as he bore down on his pretty little bird, hotness flooding the inside of him, and between them as Dorian came with a tender, satisfied sigh.

 

The next day, he had to move his hut to the opposite end of the ring. Next to Dorian's and far away from everyone else.

 

**

 

Elyn's injuries prevented Cullen from any such kind of activities that Iron Bull and Dorian so obviously enjoyed. And Viv complicated matters further by snarling and snapping like a mabari whenever Cullen lingered longer than a kiss or two.

 

But Cullen was determined that Elyn know his feelings so he stole into her hut on his third night as an avvar.

  
"Run away pup," She grinned, half rising from her bed. "Viv will skin you and make for me a pretty canine coat if she catches you here."

 

Cullen shook his head. "I need you."

 

Elyn blushed without color. "You will have to wait."

 

"No...that's not. I can't explain it. Let me show you."

 

He kissed her lightly, laying down beside her in her bed of furs, soaking up her sighs like a parched plant in the rain.

 

"I love you." Cullen breathed, hands roaming lightly over her, careful of her healing injuries. "I need you to know how much."

 

Elyn squirmed, body warming to his touch. In the days they had been separated by injury and the grim business of death and burial, she missed him. Her heart sang when he declared his love for her, sand louder when he forsook his family for her. She felt greedy, unworthy of such abundant gifts. Part of her did worry that his affections for her would cool with time but that was a worry for another day. There could be no worries now with him here, his breath hot in her ear, his tongue on her neck, his teeth nibbling wondrously at her flesh.

 

"So beautiful. Avva, my heart." He whispered to her, soft hands slipping under her tunic cupping her breasts and squeezing.

 

Her hands searched him, reached down to him, but he twisted away, growling in warning. "No. This is about you. Only you. Always you."

 

He wanted her, yes, but he wanted her pleasure more than his own. He wanted her happiness and safety more than his own. For the first time in his life, Cullen wanted a woman's pleasure completely uncaring if he achieved his own. He showed her in the tender ferocity of his kisses and the patience of his touch.

 

He delicately removed her clothing, sighing the entire time as if he'd never seen her nude before. He acted like he never had her before, treating each kiss as a new treasure, delighting in her soft cries as he swirled a tongue around a plum colored, pebbled nipple.

 

She arched into him, but he gently held her back. "Please, be careful. I don't want you to hurt yourself."

 

"Cullen, please." She begged. "You hurt me by denying me you. I need you as much as you need me. Let me feel you. Please."

 

He was gentle, so very gentle, when he pushed inside of her. The only thing he allowed himself to grip tightly was her hands, both pair locked above their heads, fingers threaded tightly, inextricable like threads woven on a loom.

 

Elyn's eyes slipped closed as she called for him. "Avva...yes avva." Cullen did not move, he stayed sheathed and still within her, savoring every tiny sensation from the flutter of her eyelids to the flexing grip of her fingers.

 

He had to move himself when she began to push her hips up, afraid she might tear her wound open. Viv would _never_ let him near her again if that happened.

 

She kissed his eyes and his face, their hand still locked together. "I love you, I love..." Elyn stuttered and faltered when Cullen moved, pleasure morphing her words into her mother tongue that Cullen did not yet understand but looked forward to learning.

 

He would learn everything. About her, about her people. Everything.

 

So when he sat next to her at her throne, no one would question if he belonged there.

 

That was his heart's only quest, his only desire.

 

To earn her.

 

For now he took delight in earning her soft scream, her eyes snapping open to catch his as she came.

 

He dislodged one hand and held the other tighter to compensate. His eyes never leaving hers, he reached down between them to stroke her creamy pearl and brought her through another and yet another curtain of pleasure.

 

Cullen didn't realize he was so close, she gripped every inch of him so tightly the slightest shift in bodies made him groan desperately even as he tried to hold it back.

 

"No, pup, don't hold back from me. Not now, not ever."

 

She showed her conviction by arching herself up into him, his body contracting with shooting pleasure that made him twitch and strain.

 

"Let go." She commanded.

 

Still determined to keep her safe, he rocked slowly as every nerve screamed at him to go faster. Cullen rocked within her, sweat beading down back and across forehead until he could hold no more. He snapped his hips forward twice, shuddering the body underneath him until he came hard and gushing, filling her and spending him.

 

"Maker's love Elyn!"

 

Immediately he kissed his apology but the Thane of his heart laughed and with arms still strong even in their fatigue, pushed him over before he could collapse atop her.

 

They held each other until their heartbeats cooled and their breathing matched. When he inhaled she exhaled, two hearts beating with one sound. One avva shared between them.

 

"Why did you come back pup?" Elyn asked hoping sleep hadn't claimed him yet. "Of all your women, why me?"

 

"What can I say little girl." He kissed her hair and sighed into it, marveling at its curly texture and softness. "When you stole me, you stole my heart."

 

Elyn smiled into his skin and kissed his neck. "Silly avva, I took nothing from you, you didn't give."

 

End

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I made that reference. No I don't care. Sorry Mia _somebody_ just had to be the villian okay?
> 
> Hope you enjoyed my contribution to the Avvar!AU craze. It was supposed to be a one shot, but here we are.
> 
> So who wants a sequel were Cullen and Dorian have to navigate the culture of being new avvar, while enemies new and old show up to make life difficult, with plenty of smut to keep us warm along the way?
> 
> Let me know here or drop a line at mirabai0821.tumblr.com
> 
> Thanks for the love.


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